
Class „ _Lk_ 

Book fcta. 

CopightU 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



LETTERS FROM AN OLD 
RAILWAY OFFICIAL 

TO HIS SON, A DIVISION SUPERINTENDENT 



BY 

Charles DeLano Hine 

WITH A POSTSCRIPT BY 
FRANK H. SPEARMAN 



CHICAGO 
THE RAILWAY AGE 

1904 



H £|fcZ,/ 



LIBRARY Of ! 
Two Copies 


)0NGRESS 
Received 


NOV 25 1904 

Copyriem Entry 
Tltnr. Zj: '^CU 
CLASS CL. XXc* NO! 

COPY 6. 



copyright, 1904, 
By Charles DeLano Hine 



To the railway officials and employes of 
America: 

Their intelligence is an inspiration; their 

steadfastness, a psalm. 



FILE NUMBERS. 



LETTER I. 
A Word of Congratulation I 

LETTER II. 
Helping the Train Dispatchers 6 

LETTER III. 
Handling a Yard 13 

LETTER IV. 
Distant Signals on Chief Clerks 18 

LETTER V. 
Safety of Trains in Yards 26 

LETTER VI. 
Standardizing Administration 31 

LETTER VII. 
The New Trainmaster and Civil Service 36 

LETTER VIII. 
Education of Several Kinds 43 

LETTER IX. 
Correspondence and Telegrams 49 

LETTER X. 
The Bayonet Precedes the Gospel 56 

LETTER XI. 
Preventing Wrecks Before They Happen 63 

LETTER XII. 
The Self-Made Man Who Worships His Maker 70 



LETTER XIII. 
The Friend-Mile as a Unit of Measure 79 

LETTER XIV. 
The Management that Breeds from Its Own Herd. . 89 

LETTER XV. 
More on Civil Service 97 

LETTER XVI. 
The Supply Train..... 104 

LETTER XVII. 
What the Big Engine Has Cost 114 

LETTER XVIII. 
Be a Superintendent — Not a Nurse 121 

LETTER XIX. 
The Rack of the Comparative Statement 130 

LETTER XX. 
Handling the Pay-Roll 137 

LETTER XXI. 
Military Organization 145 

LETTER XXII. 
Wrecks and Block Signals 153 

LETTER XXIII. 
Unionism 161 

LETTER XXIV. 

The Round-Up i6g 

POSTSCRIPT. 
By Frank H. Spearman 177 



Letters From A Railway Official 



LETTER I. 

A WORD OF CONGRATULATION. 

March 20, 1904. 

My Dear Boy: — The circular announcing 
your appointment as division superintendent 
has just been received, and it brings up a flood 
of thoughts of former years. I felt that you 
had made a mistake in leaving us to go with 
the new system, but it has turned out all right. 
I can appreciate the fact that you would 
rather work away from me, so as to make 
people believe that you can go up the official 
hill without having a pusher behind you. 

This should be one of the proudest periods 
of your life. You are now in a position to 
do good to your company, to your fellow 
man, and incidentally to yourself. No matter 
how highly organized a road may be, the im- 
portance of the office of division superinten- 
dent is in direct proportion to the ability and 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

earnestness of the incumbent. The position 
is little or big, restricted or untrammeled, just 
as you make it. Many a superintendent has 
had to double the hill of a swelled knob, and 
run as a last section into the next promo- 
tion terminal. You have too much of your 
mother's good sense ever to cause anybody 
else to put up signals for you on this account. 
Therefore do not lose your democratic man- 
ner. Keep your heart warm and regard the 
wider field as an opportunity to get more 
friends on your staff. Try to call every em- 
ploye in your territory by name, as Caesar 
did his soldiers; for all the traffic of good- 
will must run in a direction toward you if you 
want maximum results, as they call efficiency 
nowadays. Good old rule 121 of the standard 
code says: "When in doubt take the safe 
course and run no risks,'' which, in the case 
of acquaintance, means if uncertain whether 
you know a man or not, speak to him and 
give him the glad hand anyway. You will 
have to discipline men, but that can be done 
without parting company with your good 
manners. Remember that the much-abused 
word "discipline" comes from the same root 
as the word "disciple," a pupil, a learner, a 
2 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

follower. It is always easier to lead men 
than to drive them. 

When you go over the division do not try 
to see how many telegrams you can send, 
but how few. It is usually a pretty safe rule 
after writing a telegram on the hind end of a 
train to carry it by two or three stations to 
see if you would rather not take it back to 
the office yourself. The dispatchers used to 
tell your old dad that they couldn't have told 
he was out on the line as far as his messages 
were an indication. Another thing, do not 
try to plug your whistle and muffle your bell. 
Let everybody know you are coming. The 
"Old Sleuth" stunt is for criminals, not for 
honest employes. Be on hand so frequently 
that your coming is taken as a matter of 
course. Never hunt quail with a brass band, 
but bear in mind that men, unlike quail, rather 
like to perch on a band wagon. If .you are 
tempted to wait behind box cars to see if 
the men on a night pony have gone in the 
hay, do not yield, but get out, see that the 
switches are lined up, and count the ties in 
front of the headlight until somebody gives 
her steam; just as Napoleon walked post for 
the sleeping sentinel. Then, if you administer 

3 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

a polite jacking up it will be twice as ef- 
fective, even if the delay to the work that 
one time has continued. Remember that 
things are not as they should be, and it is 
probably your own fault if, under normal con- 
ditions, a particular movement depends upon 
your personal efforts. Any routine action 
that you take should be calculated to help 
many trains, or one train many times; or to 
help many men, not merely the trains or men 
in question. It is all right, in emergencies, 
to jump in and do the work of a conductor, 
of an engineman, of a switch tender, or of any 
other employe. The great trouble is in dis- 
criminating between an emergency and a de- 
fect which can better be remedied in some 
other way. The smaller the caliber of the 
official the more numerous the emergencies 
to his mind. 

You should try to arrange your work so as 
to stay up all night at least once a week, 
either in the office, or better, on the road or 
in the yards. You will keep better in touch 
with the men and the things for which you, 
asleep or awake, are always responsible. You 
remember .when your sister Lucy was little 
how we asked her why she said her prayers 

4 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

at night but usually omitted them in the 
morning. Her answer which so tickled you 
was, "I ask God to take care of me at night, 
but I can take care of myself in the daytime." 
It is much the same way with a railroad. 
From your point of view it will take pretty 
fair care of itself as a daylight job, but at 
night that proposition loses its rights. The 
youngest dispatcher, by virtue of being the 
senior representative awake, is to a certain 
extent general manager. The least experi- 
enced men are in the yards and roundhouses. 
The ever-faithful sectionmen are off the right 
of way. The car inspector's light and the 
engineman's torch are poor substitutes for 
the sun in locating defects. The most active 
brains are dulled by the darkness just before 
dawn. Then it is that a brief hour may side- 
track or derail the good work of many days. 
It is this responsibility, this struggle with na- 
ture, this helping God to work out the good 
in men, that makes our profession noble and 
develops qualities of greatness in its mem- 
bers. 

Next time I shall try to tell you something 
about helping your train dispatchers. 

With a father's blessing, ever your own, 

D. A. D. 
5 



LETTER II. 

HELPING THE TRAIN DISPATCHERS. 

March 2.J, 1904. 
My Dear Boy: — I promised in my last to 
say something about helping your train dis- 
patchers. The way to help any man is first 
to encourage him and by showing that you 
appreciate his good qualities give him confi- 
dence in himself. When you come in off the 
road tell the dispatcher, if such be the case, 
"Nice meeting point you made yesterday for 
15 and 16; I was there and they both kept 
moving almost like double track." If your 
division has been badly handled, the dis- 
patcher, unaccustomed to such appreciation, 
will at first think this is a sarcastic prelude 
to having the harpoon thrown into him; but 
your sincerity will soon disabuse his mind of 
such a notion. Sarcasm in official intercourse 
or toward one's subordinates should never be 
tolerated. It is an expensive kind of extra 
that should never be run. When you praise 
a man it will add to his good feeling if some 
- 6 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

one else happens to be present. If you have 
to censure anyone, whether directly or 
through the channels, do it privately and 
spare the recipient all unnecessary humilia- 
tion. The official who remembers to mention 
good work will find his rebukes and criti- 
cisms much more effective in remedying poor 
work than the official whose theory and prac- 
tice are to take up failures and to let successes 
be taken for granted. 

Another way to help a man is to lead him 
away from the pitfalls that are peculiar to his 
path of work. The official who is an old dis- 
patcher has to fight in himself the tempta- 
tion to be the whole cheese. He has to learn 
to trust subordinates with details. Every po- 
sition entails some inherent temptations. The 
absolute, unquestioned authority given a dis- 
patcher in train movements breeds a tempta- 
tion to be autocratic and unreasonable, to put 
out too many orders, to give too many in- 
structions. Therefore, try to get your dis- 
patchers in touch with your crews. If the 
former are in a skyscraper uptown, get au- 
thority to build an office far them at the termi- 
nal where most of the crews live. Personal 
contact is much better than long-distance 

7 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

communication by wire. There is enough of 
the latter from the very nature of the busi- 
ness without causing an unnecessary amount 
by artificial conditions. 

The temptation of a legislator is to make 
too many laws; of a doctor to prescribe too 
much medicine; of an old man to give too 
much advice; and of a train dispatcher, once 
more, to put out too many orders. It used to 
be thought by some that the best dispatcher 
was the one who put out the most orders. 
The later and better idea is that, generally 
speaking, the best dispatcher puts out the 
fewest orders. It is always easier to give 
orders of any kind than it is to execute them. 
It is a far cry from an O. S. on a train sheet 
to getting a heavy drag into a sidetrack and 
out again. It often takes longer to stop a 
train and get an order signed and completed 
than the additional time given in the order 
amounts to. Even a judicious use of the be- 
neficent nineteen order involves more or less 
delay. One of the lessons a dispatcher has to 
learn is to know when he is up against it; 
when he has figured badly; and when not to 
make a bad matter worse by vainly trying to 
retrieve a hopeless delay. A good dispatcher 
8 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

will know without being told that he has 
made a poor meeting point. Educate him to 
consider that as an error to be avoided under 
like conditions in the future; not as a mistake 
to be made worse by putting out more orders 
that may fail to help the stabbed train 
enough, and may result in having every fel- 
low on the road delayed. If any train must 
be delayed, let it be one that is already late 
rather than one that is on time. Above all 
get the confidence of your dispatchers so that 
they will not try to cover up their own mis- 
takes or those of others. Teach them that, 
in the doubtful event of its becoming neces- 
sary, the superintendent is able to do the 
covering up act for the whole division. 

Every superintendent and higher official 
should remember that if the same train order 
is given every day there must be something 
radically wrong with the time table. All over 
this broad land, day after day, hundreds of 
unnecessary train orders are being sent be- 
cause many time tables are constructed on the 
models of forty years ago. At that time, in 
fact as in name, there were two classes of 
trains, passenger and freight. To-day there 
are in reality at least two distinct classes of 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

passenger trains and two classes of freights, 
or at least four in all. On most of the roads 
in the country passenger trains of whatever 
nature or importance are all shown in one 
class, the first. As a result every limited 
train in the inferior direction on single track 
has to be given right by train order over op- 
posing local passenger trains in the superior 
direction. In other words, the working time 
table, by definition a general law, has no more 
practical value, as between such trains, than 
an advertising folder. A train order by its 
very nature is an exception to the general law, 
the time table. When the exception becomes 
the rule it is high time to head in or to put 
out a thinking flag. Some years ago your 
old dad after much persuasion induced his 
superiors to let him make four classes of 
trains on a pretty warm piece of single track. 
The result directly and indirectly was to re- 
duce the number of train orders by twenty 
or twenty-five per day. Every train order 
given increases the possibility of mistake and 
disaster; the fewer the orders the safer the 
operation. The change was made without 
even an approach to a mistake or the sem- 
blance of disaster. The dispatchers being less 

10 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

occupied were able to give more attention to 
local freights, and the general efficiency of the 
train service was greatly increased. The 
wires could go down and the most important 
trains would keep moving. It has stood the 
test of years and if the old method were re- 
sumed a grievance committee would probably 
wait on the management. 

Successful politicians and public speakers 
have long since learned not to disgust their 
hearers by trying to talk in language ridicu- 
lously simple and uncultured. For us to say 
that the intelligent employes of to-day cannot 
keep in mind four or even five classes of 
trains is to confuse them with the compara- 
tively illiterate men of a bygone generation. 
The public school and the daily newspaper 
have made a part of our problem easier. We 
are paying higher wages than ever before, but 
is it not partly our own fault if we fail to 
get full value received? 

Therefore, see if your time tables appeal to 
tradition or to reason ; if they belong to a pe- 
riod when women wore hoopskirts, or to a 
time when women ride wheels and play golf. 
In brief, before you take the stylus to remove 
the dirt ballast from the dispatcher's eye, be 

ii 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

sure that there are no brakebeams stuck in 
your own headlight. 

Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 



12 



LETTER III. 

HANDLING A YARD. 

April 3, 1904. 

My Dear Boy: — You have asked me to 
give you some pointers on handling a yard. 
You will find that nearly all situations in a 
yard hark back to one simple rule, which is: 
When you get hold of a car move it as far as 
possible toward its final destination before 
you let go of it. 

The training of a switchman is usually such 
that, if let alone, he will stick the car in the 
first convenient track and wait to make a de- 
livery until he can pull every track in the yard 
and put with it all other cars with the same 
cards or marks. By this time some other 
fellow with a similar honesty of purpose but 
differently applied will come along and bury 
the car or block the first man in so that one 
engine has to stand idle. A yardmaster has 
to learn to keep his engines scattered and to 
hold each foreman responsible for the work of 
an engine. A good yardmaster knows in- 

13 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

stinctively where to be at a certain time to 
minimize the delay incident to engines bunch- 
ing. The old switchman who becomes a yard- 
master often proves a failure because he can- 
not overcome his inclination to follow one 
engine and take a hand in the switching him- 
self. By so doing he may perhaps increase 
the work accomplished by that one engine, 
possibly five per cent ; but in the meantime the 
other engines, for want of comprehensive, in- 
telligent instructions, are getting in each oth- 
er's way and the efficiency of the day's service 
is decreased maybe twenty per cent. 

Good yardmasters are even harder to dis- 
cover or develop than good train dispatchers. 
The exposure, the irregular hours for the 
yardmasters meals in even the best regulated 
yards make a good conductor leery about giv- 
ing up a comfortable run to assume the in- 
creased responsibility of a yard. The pay of 
a yardmaster is little more than that of a 
conductor and is sometimes less. Right here 
is a chance for some deep administrative 
thought. It is so much easier to get good 
conductors than good yardmasters, should we 
not make the latter position more attractive? 
Some roads have done this by making it one 

14 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

of the positions from which to promote train- 
masters, and seldom have such appointees 
fallen down. However, there are hardly 
enough promotion loaves and fishes to go 
around. Men get tired of living on skimmed 
milk on earth for the sake of promised cream 
in heaven. Every switch engine worked costs 
the company several hundred dollars per 
month, and the yardmaster whose good figur- 
ing can save working even one engine is more 
than earning his salary. 

The closer you can get your yardmasters 
to your official family the better your adminis- 
tration. Pick up a yardmaster occasionally 
and take him to headquarters with you so that 
he will keep acquainted with the dispatchers. 
This will hold down friction and save the 
company's good money. A dispatcher natur- 
ally wants to get all the trains he can into a 
terminal, while a yardmaster is doing his level 
best to get trains out. With such radically 
different points of professional view there is 
a big opportunity for the superintendent and 
the trainmaster to do the harmonizing act, to 
keep pleasantly before employes the fact that 
all are working for the same company, that all 
do business with the same paymaster. Blessed 

15 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

are the peacemakers doesn't mean necessarily 
there must first be trouble. Peace carried in 
stock is better than that manufactured on 
hurry-up shop orders. 

If you are looking for talent to run a yard, 
consider some ambitious dispatcher. Too 
few dispatchers have become yardmasters. 
The same cool head, the same quick judg- 
ment, the same executive ability are needed 
in both positions. The man who has success- 
fully filled both is usually equipped to go 
against almost any old official job, without 
having to back up and take a run for the hill. 
The curse of modern civilization is over- 
specialization. The world grows better and 
produces stronger, better men all the while. 
Perhaps this is in spite of rather than on ac- 
count of highly specialized organization. No 
industry can afford to be without the old- 
fashioned all around man who is good any- 
where you put him. 

The work of the yardmaster is more spec- 
tacular than that of the dispatcher. To come 
down to a congested yard among a lot of 
discouraged men blocked in without room to 
sidetrack a handcar is like sitting down to a 
train sheet with most of the trains tied up 
16 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

for orders. In either case let the right man 
take hold and in a few minutes the men in- 
volved will tell you who it is has assumed 
charge. Without realizing it and without 
knowing why, they redouble their efforts; 
things begin to move, and the incident goes 
down in the legends of the division to be the 
talk of the caboose and the roundhouse for 
years to come. To the man whose cool head 
and earnestness are bringing it all about 
comes the almost unconscious exhilaration 
that there is in leading reinforcements to the 
firing line. He feels with the Count of Monte 
Cristo, "The world is mine,' , I have the 
switches set to head it in. 

Get out of your head the young brakeman's 
idea that yard jobs are for old women and 
hasbeens. 

Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 



LETTER IV. 

DISTANT SIGNALS ON CHIEF CLERKS. 

April 10, 1904. 
My Dear Boy : — You write me that you have 
been kept very much in your office of late 
because the general superintendent has taken 
your chief clerk for the same position in his 
own office. You hope that your friend, the 
auditor, may be able to furnish you a good 
man who has such a thorough knowledge of 
accounts that you will be able to give less 
attention to such matters and therefore be 
out on the road that much more. You will 
pardon a father's severity, but you are run- 
ning on bad track, and my interest prompts 
me to put out a slow order for you. You have 
had the division a short time, it is true, but 
that is only a partial excuse for not having 
better organization than your letter unwit- 
tingly admits. You have been there long 
enough to have sized up the men on the di- 
vision, and you should know where to put 
your hand on a man for practically any posi- 
18 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

tion. A good organizer does not wait for a 
vacancy to occur or even come in sight be- 
fore thinking of the next incumbent. He is 
always into clear on such a proposition. He 
has thought it all out beforehand. He has in 
mind two or three available men for every 
possible vacancy that can occur, for every 
job on the pike, including his own. Wher- 
ever possible by judicious changing of men he 
not only has a man in mind, but he has given 
him some preliminary training for, perhaps 
some actual experience in, the position to be 
permanently rilled. 

The tone of your letter is half complaining 
because the general superintendent has taken 
your good chief clerk. Away with such a 
feeling; it is unworthy. You should feel flat- 
tered that your division had a chance to fill 
the vacancy. You should rejoice in the ad- 
vancement of your faithful subordinate. Some 
divisions, like some officials, are known the 
country over as developers of talent. 

Youth is proverbially quick, and I think 
sometimes that you youngsters are quicker at 
getting into a rut than are we old fogies. Why 
for a chief clerk must you necessarily have a 
man with office experience? Does it not oc- 

19 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

cur to you that your office will be in better 
touch with its responsibilities if it is in charge 
of a man who has worked outside along the 
road? Why not look among your trainmen, 
your yardmen, your dispatchers, your agents, 
your operators, or even among your section 
foremen? Experience is a great teacher, but 
it can never entirely supply the place of native 
ability, of natural adaptability. Brains and 
tact are the essentials and each is compara- 
tively useless without the other. Both must 
be developed by training, but such training 
does not necessarily have to take the same 
course for all men. Railroading as a business 
is only seventy-five years old, and as a pro- 
fession is much younger than that. It is too 
early in the game to lay down iron-clad rules 
as to the best channels for training and ad- 
vancement. Common sense demands that 
such avenues be broad and more or less defi- 
nite. The danger is that they will be only 
paths and so narrow that they will wear into 
ruts. 

Do not delude yourself into thinking that 
by going out on the road you can get away 
from the accounts. They are a flagman that 
is never left behind to come in on a following 

20 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

section. You can never get beyond watching 
the company's dollars and cents any more 
than a successful musician can omit practice. 
Some officials think that the way to examine 
a payroll or a voucher is to see that all the 
extensions are accurately made, that the col- 
umns are correctly added. This mechanical 
clerical work is about the last thing an official 
should have to do. He should know how, but 
his examination should be from a different 
viewpoint. Primarily he must look to see if 
the company is getting value received for 
money expended. He must know that the 
rolls and vouchers are honestly made up, that 
agreements involved, if any, are carried out 
to the letter. The agreements may not be to 
his personal liking, may not accord with his 
ideas of justice, but the responsibility for that 
part is his superior's, not his own. There is 
a proper channel for him to follow in attempt- 
ing to protect the company's interests, but 
that channel is not the one of a petty ruling 
on a minor question involved in a voucher or 
a payroll. Overtime, for example, is not a 
spook but a business proposition. If earned 
according to the schedule it should be allowed 
unhesitatingly. Before you jack up a yard- 

21 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

master for having so much overtime, see if 
the cutting out of that overtime will mean the 
greater expense of working another engine. 
The constant thought of every official is how 
to reduce expenses, how to cut down payrolls. 
This habit of mind, commendable as it is, has 
its dangers. In any business we must spend 
money to get money. The auditor's state- 
ments do not tell us w T hy we lost certain traf- 
fic through relatively poor service. Their 
silence is not eloquent upon the subject of 
the business we failed to get. Figures must 
be fought with figures and many a good op- 
erating official has had to lie down in the face 
of the auditor's fire because, from lack of in- 
telligent study of statistics on his own part, 
he had no ammunition with which to reload. 
Do not feel that if you happen to advocate 
an increase of expense you are necessarily a 
discredit to the profession, a dishonor to the 
cloth. 

There are few roads that would not save 
money in the long run by allowing each di- 
vision say one hundred dollars per month 
for developing talent. The expense dis- 
tributed to oil for administrative machinery 
would express the idea. It would then be up 

22 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

to the superintendent to work out original 
methods for spending this money to the best 
advantage. A bright young fellow with the 
ear marks of a coming official could be given 
training in various positions. While he is 
acting in a certain position, the regular in- 
cumbent could be sent to observe methods 
elsewhere or be given training in some other 
department. For example, while your can- 
didate is running a yard, the yardmaster 
could be an understudy for a supervisor. A 
station agent could take the place of a 
section foreman, an operator the place of 
a chief clerk, and so on indefinitely. Do 
not understand me as advocating a whole- 
sale shakeup or the doing away with per- 
manency of tenure. The limitations of the 
majority of men are such that they are better 
left in one fixed groove. We grow to be nar- 
row in our methods because men are narrow. 
What I want is for us to be broad enough in 
method to keep from dwarfing the exceptions 
in the ranks, and at the same time keep the 
parts of our administrative machine inter- 
changeable. The original entry into the serv- 
ice is more or less a matter of accident as 
to department entered. Let us not leave a 

23 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

good man the creature of accident all his 
days. The company is the loser as well as the 
man. We complain because the trades unions 
advocate a closed shop, a restricted output, 
a limited number of apprentices. Is not their 
attitude a logical development of the example 
we have set? Like master, like man. 

Let your new chief clerk understand that 
he is never to use your signature or initials 
to censure or reprimand any employe, either 
directly or by implication. That is a prerog- 
ative you cannot afford to delegate. It is 
all right if a complaint comes in for the chief 
clerk to investigate by writing in your name 
and saying: "Kindly advise concerning al- 
leged failure to do so and so ;" or, "We have 
a complaint that such and such happened 
and would like to have your statement;" but 
he should stop right there. It is all wrong 
for him or for you to add, "We are aston- 
ished at your ignorance of the rules;" or, 
"You must understand that such conduct will 
not be tolerated." Wait until both sides of 
the case are heard. Then you alone must 
act. The division will not go to pieces while 
such matters await your personal attention. 
While you are learning that even a brake- 

24 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

man's unpaid board bill may be satisfactorily 
explained, the brakemen are learning that 
even a superintendent can find the time to be 
fair and just. A lack of development of the 
judicial quality in chief clerks and their su- 
periors has cost the railroad stockholders of 
this country many a dollar. 

Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 



25 



LETTER V. 

SAFETY OF TRAINS IN YARDS. 

April 17, 1904. 

My Dear Boy: — I have yours saying that 
my letter on yard work omits mention of 
the most important feature, the safety of 
trains in yards; that the letter is much like 
a cup of lunch-counter coffee — very good, 
what there is of it, and plenty of it, such 
as it is. 

I admit that you have caught me not only 
foul of the main, but outside the switches. I 
appreciate your consideration in so politely 
pulling the whistle cord for me, when you 
would have been justified in setting the air. 
We all like to be with good company and pull 
the president's special, and in this case I seem 
to have with me no less distinguished com- 
panions than the American Railway Associa- 
tion. That able body has been detoured too 
long around this important matter of rules 
governing trains in yards. Before I leave 
their varnished cars and climb into the gang- 
26 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

way of a switch engine to run into the yards, 
I want the conductor to throw off a register 
slip setting forth my admiration for the great 
work already done by that brainy organiza- 
tion. I take off my hat to the American Rail- 
way Association. When I take off said hat, 
especially to a lady, I always keep both eyes 
open. Adoration should not be too blind or 
one may overlook some other meeting points 
and land clear off the right of way. 

Long ago some bright minds, whose identity 
is lost in the rush of the years, hit upon the 
happy expedient of dividing trains into two 
kinds, regular and extra; just as early the- 
ology divided mankind into the two con- 
venient classes of saints and sinners. This 
designation of trains, doubtless like all in- 
novations opposed at first, soon acquired the 
sacredness that time brings to all things. At 
that period when we got a car over the road 
and into the terminal we felt that its troubles 
were about ended, as did the contemporary 
novelist whose terminal was always a be- 
trothal scene. Under modern conditions a 
car reaching a terminal, like a couple leav- 
ing the altar, finds that its problems have 
only fairly begun. Less romance, more 

progress. 

27 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

Did you ever try to explain to an intelligent 
traveling man just what a train is? Did he 
not ask you some questions that kept you 
guessing for a week? Did he not remind you 
that outsiders usually make the inventions 
that revolutionize operation? Radical changes 
in methods of warfare are seldom neces- 
sitated by the inventions of military men. 
A druggist invented the automatic coupler. 
Railroad men did not patent the air brake or 
devise the sleeping car. All this is natural, 
because in any profession where one attains 
excellence in a given method his mental vision 
may become contracted; he may reason in a 
circle. 

Every once in a while we are appalled by a 
terrible collision in a terminal, the result per- 
haps of some poor devil of an employe not 
appreciating fully the meaning of "all trains." 
To the innocent bystander the switch engine 
and cars are just as much a train as the Pull- 
man flyer with its two little green markers on 
the last car. After such accidents, for a brief 
period, we hear a great deal about act of 
Providence, presumptuousness of man, falli- 
bility of the human mind, surprise checking, 
discipline of employes, company spirit, gov- 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

ernmental supervision and a lot of other more 
or less unrelated subjects. Are we not to 
blame for not having met the issue squarely? 
Is it not time that we legislated to recognize 
the scores of engines chasing through our 
terminals, from freighthouse to yard, from 
engine house to station? Are they outcasts? 
Do the millions of dollars of investment they 
represent come through a different treasury? 

To the human mind an engine or a motor 
is a train, while a cut of cars without motive 
power is only a piece of a train, and goes to 
the brain as an idea of something incomplete. 
All the artificial definitions of the standard 
code cannot alter this state of facts. What 
do you think of the following proposed desig- 
nations and tentative definitions? 

Train. — An engine (or motor) in service, 
with or without cars. Two or more engines 
(or motors) may be combined as one train. 

Regular Train. — A train represented on the 
time table. It may consist of sections. A 
section derives its running existence from a 
train order requiring a regular train or the 
proper section thereof, to display prescribed 
signals. 

Extra Train. — A train not represented on 
29 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

the time table, but deriving its running ex- 
istence from train order. 

Yard Train. — A train neither represented 
on the time table nor created by train order, 
but deriving its running existence from rules 
governing movements within prescribed 
limits. 

You will find if you work these definitions 
through the standard code the changes will be 
slight, but the results comprehensive and sat- 
isfactory. This will do as a starter, but you 
will live to see trains handled on single track 
without train orders as we now understand 
the term. 

If this answers your signal, suppose we call 
in that flag we whistled out when we stopped 
to talk it over. 

Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 



30 



LETTER VI. 

STANDARDIZING ADMINISTRATION. 

April 24, 1904. 

My Dear Boy: — While backing in on a 
branch idea I bumped into a load consigned 
to the American Railway Association which, 
with your permission, I wish to bring in be- 
hind the caboose to save a switch. Yes, I 
have tied a green flag on the rear grabiron 
for a marker. When the hind man has 
dropped off to shut the switch and has given 
the eagle eye a high sign, I shall make a note 
on the wheel report to the effect that there is 
not a much better daylight marker than the 
caboose itself. Some people doubt the neces- 
sity for green flags on freight trains or work 
trains unless the caboose does not happen to 
be the last car. Night markers are unques- 
tionably necessary, but are not a source of 
additional expense, as the same oil answers 
for both the rear red signal and the marker. 

The idea in question is that the American 
Railway Association might well afford to pay 

31 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

salaries to more of its officials and let certain 
ones give their entire time to committee work 
and the general welfare. It is too much to 
expect that men, probably already over- 
worked on their own roads, can find the 
broadest solution of problems in the very 
limited time allowed. It might be possible 
to work out a plan whereby election to cer- 
tain positions in the association would mean 
that the individual elected was to be loaned 
to the association for his term of office, say 
two years, and then return to service with his 
own company. A permanent body of officials 
in such an organization would be undesira- 
ble, save of course the able secretary, for the 
reason that too long a separation from active 
service would beget an indifference to prac- 
tical operating conditions. Under such a plan 
officials would have to be elected by name 
to prevent a company from unloading any old 
rail on the association. You know that some 
statistician has figured out that the average 
official life of a railroad man in any one posi- 
tion is only about two years. Rearrangement 
of the staff on the return of an official from 
such broadening special duty should not be a 
difficult matter. But, as a man once said to 

32 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

me, "You will not bring all these reforms 
about until the old fogies die off, and by that 
time you will be an old fogy yourself and it 
will not make any difference." 

There is almost no limit to the number of 
matters in railway administration that can be 
made standard and uniform for all roads. A 
great deal has been done, but to a coming gen- 
eration the present stage of accomplishment 
will seem to have been only a fair beginning. 
The hopeful feature is that roads now meet 
each other in a much broader spirit than ever 
before. The fortress that parleys is half 
taken, and when negotiations looking to uni- 
formity are once begun a long stride forward 
has been taken. Take the wage agreements 
of a dozen roads at a large terminal. All 
twelve are intended to mean practically the 
same thing, yet the wording of no two will 
be found alike. This probably is not due so 
much to a disinclination to get together as to 
a lack of time for working out uniform de- 
tails. 

Some roads are noticeable for the clearness, 
conciseness and brevity of their instructions. 
Others employ a lot of surplus words which 
are as expensive and annoying in operation 

33 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

as dead cars in a yard. On every road there 
are a few men in the official family who have 
a faculty of expression, either inborn or ac- 
quired. Some day when we more fully over- 
come the prejudice against sending officials 
to school we shall utilize the services of such 
valuable men as instructors in style. When 
this is done, especially in the traffic and legal 
departments, we shall materially reduce our 
telegraph expenses. The mere thought of the 
thousands of unnecessary words flying over 
the railroad wires every day is enough to give 
one telegrapher's cramp. Some roads occa- 
sionally censor telegrams with a view to re- 
ducing their number and their length. These 
efforts, like municipal reform, are apt to be 
too spasmodic to prove of lasting value. Suc- 
cess in anything depends upon keeping most 
everlastingly at it. You notice that I do not 
confine this remark to our own profession, 
Carry a flag for me against the man who al- 
ways says: "In railroading you have to do 
thus and so, for it's not like other business." 
All must admit that conditions in railroading 
are intense; that, except in an army in time 
of war, there is no profession that is more 
strenuous or calls for better staying qualities. 

34 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

These facts, however, do not put us in a class 
by ourselves, a little lower than the angels, a 
few car lengths ahead of perfection. As 
Oliver Cromwell said, some things are funda- 
mental. One of them is that good organiza- 
tion and administration depend upon certain 
basic principles which hold true for any in- 
dustry. Whatever one's religious views, he 
must find that the Bible is one of the best 
books of rules ever written, one of the best 
standard codes on organization that has been 
devised. Men were organizers on a large scale 
centuries before railroads were built. 

When, after months of deliberation, the 
convention had finally agreed upon the pro- 
visions of the Constitution of the United 
States, the document was referred for re- 
vision to a committee on style and expression. 
The result has been the admiration of the 
English speaking race. The caller's book 
does not show that the American Railway As- 
sociation has ordered a run for such a com- 
mittee. Should a claim of that sort be made 
it would hardly be advisable to file the last 
standard code as an exhibit. 

Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 

35 



LETTER VII. 

THE NEW TRAINMASTER AND CIVIL SERVICE. 

May i, 1904. 
My Dear Boy: — I have your letter telling 
about your new trainmaster. You feel that 
a man from another division has been forced 
on you by the general superintendent; that 
you have suffered a personal affront because 
the promotion you recommended on your 
own division has not been approved. I am 
sorry to rule against you, but from your own 
story if anybody deserves six months twice a 
year, it is you and not the general superin- 
tendent. The latter may have been lacking 
in tact ; he may have been unduly inconsider- 
ate for your personal feelings, but in making 
the appointment, which you admit is a good 
one, he has doubtless been actuated by a con- 
scientious sense of duty. Remember that a 
fundamental principle of highly organized 
bodies is that a superior cannot expect to se- 
lect his own lieutenants. The next higher is 
always consulted and generally the latter's su- 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

periors also. The theory is that they are in 
a position to have a broader view, to size up 
more talent, to draw from the system at large, 
and to accentuate principles and policies in 
promotions and appointments. This theory 
is supported by practice, which goes even 
further. On most roads circulars signed by 
the superintendent and approved by the gen- 
eral superintendent announce the appoint- 
ment of a trainmaster. Do not let this delude 
you into thinking the general manager has 
not been consulted. In fact, if you could 
drop a nickel in the slot and get a phono- 
graphic report of conferences on the appoint- 
ment, you might happen to recognize the 
voice of the president himself before the ma- 
chine shut off. All of which should convince 
you that the stockholders and directors have 
strewn other official pebbles besides yourself 
along the organization beach. You say that 
the relation of superintendent and trainmaster 
should be that of elder brother and younger 
brother. Very true, but do any of us ever 
select our brothers? 

In a primitive state of civilization, when 
force is law, the military chieftain rules. He 
makes and breaks his lieutenants at pleasure. 

37 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

The oldest form of organization we have is 
the military, for armies are older than govern- 
ments. Every nation has its birth in the 
throes of battle. Time passes and the chief- 
tain finds his lieutenants insisting on perma- 
nency of tenure. Gradually they secure it, 
and channels of promotion and appointment 
are defined. These reach the lower grades 
and the general finds that he has not even 
the authority to discuss a private soldier from 
the service until the latter has been convicted 
by a court-martial of an offense covered by 
enactment of the legislative body of the na- 
tion. In every civilized country officers are 
commissioned by the executive head of the 
nation and by no one else. The general-in- 
chief may recommend, but he cannot appoint 
even a second lieutenant. Consider now a 
commercial organization. Do you think the 
high-salaried captain of an ocean liner can 
select his first and second officers without 
consulting his superiors? Does he select his 
own crew? Really, now, do you think the 
general superintendent should perfunctorily 
approve your recommendation for train- 
master? 

Men have been organizing armies and have 

38 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

been going down to the sea in ships for thou- 
sands of years. Let the railroads, which have 
been in existence only seventy-five years, draw 
another leaf from the lesson of the ages. The 
time is fast coming when an official cannot 
discharge a skilled laborer from the service 
without the approval of at least one higher 
official. We may not like it; we may say 
that such policies will put the road in the 
hands of a receiver. That is just what the 
conductors said when we took away from 
them the privilege of hiring their own brake- 
men. It will come just the same. We may 
as well look pleasant and see the bright side. 
Where employment is made a lifetime busi- 
ness, where admission thereto is restricted to 
the lower grades and to younger men, public 
sentiment will not stand for letting the ques- 
tion of a man's livelihood be decided by any 
one official, however fair and just he may be. 
Safety and good administration may demand 
the man's summary suspension from duty by 
the immediate official or employe in charge. 
If the man has been in the service a prescribed 
probationary period his permanent discharge 
will have to be approved by higher authority. 
Men will not care to risk having a recom- 

39 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

mendation for discharge disapproved. They 
will learn that the more carefully a discharge 
has been considered the less readily will a re- 
instatement be made. 

Some people think you cannot have mili- 
tary methods and organization on a railroad 
because it has no guardhouse. This is a mis- 
take. Your old dad, after trying both, finds 
that railroads, in some respects, have a more 
powerful discipline than the army. A dis- 
cipline based on bread and butter, shoes for 
the baby, love of home, and pride of family, 
which is the bulwark of the state, has in itself 
all necessary elements for maximum practical 
effectiveness. 

Reinstatements, unless based on new evi- 
dence, are demoralizing to discipline, for the 
reason that the unworthy employe bumps 
back to a lower grade some deserving man, 
whose good service is then reckoned at a dis- 
count. Some passenger conductors become 
so color blind they cannot tell the company's 
money from their own. They keep down the 
wrong lead until the auditor derails them at 
the spotter's switch. The ex-conductor gets 
hungry, the sympathetic grievance commit- 
tee, not knowing what is for its own best in- 
40 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

terests, intercedes. The management, dream- 
ing of loyalty in coming strikes, reinstates 
the offender. Some young conductor, who, 
on the strength of his promotion, has married 
or bought a home, is set back to braking. 
This causes some brakeman to carry the mail 
to the extra list. He quits in disgust and an- 
other road, less sympathetic, gets the benefit 
of his training. Other reinstatements follow 
and more of the younger men quit. Years 
go on, a rush of business comes. The man- 
agement look in vain for promotion material 
and wonder at the seeming ingratitude in 
quitting of so many good young men whom 
it was fully intended to promote — in the sweet 
by and by. This is not the experience of 
one road, but of many. Let us be just before 
we are generous. 

Speaking of discharged employes, did you 
ever happen to be in a general office with an 
ex-passenger conductor, discharged for "un- 
satisfactory services, ,, but seeking immediate 
reinstatement; and have an ex-official, who 
left the service in first-class standing, come in 
and ask for the next official vacancy? The 
conductor might succeed, but the official 
would fall a sacrifice on the shrine of civil 

41 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

service, a fetich because, in its true meaning, 
so little understood. 

I shall string a civil service limited for you 
on some other time card. 

Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 



42 



LETTER VIII. 

EDUCATION OF SEVERAL KINDS. 

May 8, 1904. 
My Dear Boy : — I happened to meet your 
general manager the other day, and the way 
he spoke of the good work you are doing 
warmed the cockles of my old heart. He 
said that you couldn't rest easy until you 
knew more about the division than any other 
man. This, of course, is as it should be, 
but it is astonishing how many division super- 
intendents are satisfied to grope along in the 
dark. Then some fine day the general offi- 
cials come along on an inspection trip and 
unintentionally make the superintendent look 
like thirty cents by the sincere questions they 
ask about the division which he is unable to 
answer. If one's memory has not been 
trained by education it is a good thing to 
condense information and have it in a note- 
book in the vest pocket. Some wise man 
has said that all education after we are 
twenty-five years old consists in knowing 
where to look for things. 

43 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

Another help that school education gives 
to an official is to broaden him so that he can 
use different methods on different properties. 
There are three main reasons why officials 
without much early education have succeeded 
and will continue to succeed. The first is 
native ability, which remains comparatively 
undeveloped without the second, which is op- 
portunity. The third is the good luck to 
work under organizers and developers of 
talent. Training under the right sort of 
leaders is an education in itself. The danger 
of relying on such training alone is that one 
may copy too blindly the methods of his 
master without being broad enough to realize 
that the same master under other conditions 
of territory would adopt radically different 
methods. This is the reason why there are 
so many failures when a new man takes a 
crowd of his followers to reorganize a prop- 
erty. If all succeed, very well, but if one 
fails the most of the bunch go tumbling down 
like a row of blocks. 

Again, the educated man from his knowl- 
edge of history is less likely to forget that 
what may go in fifteen-year-old Oklahoma 
will receive the icy mitt and the marble heart 

44 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

in three-hundred-year-old Virginia. Triples 
that are O. K. in cavalier South Carolina may 
be too quick acting in puritan Massachusetts. 
Commercialism, like patriotism, rests on cer- 
tain fundamental principles. The application 
of these principles may be as uniform as a 
train of system cars; it may be as diverse as 
the cars in a train of a connecting line. 
Orthodoxy is usually my doxy. 

The rough and ready efficiency of the West, 
which has developed a vast domain, has won 
the praise of the world. Our rough and 
ready brethren are finding that, as society 
rapidly becomes more highly organized, this 
old-time efficiency must be supplemented 
with technical education. So you find your 
self-made magnate giving his sons college 
educations. The only regrettable part is that 
to make it easy the old man raises the low 
joints for the boys and they do not always 
get bumpings enough to test their equip- 
ment thoroughly. Time will correct this, 
and more college men, more presidents' sons, 
will fire, will switch, will brake, will become 
men behind cars as well as men behind desks. 
It is not only what you know, but what you 
make people believe you know, that counts 

45 



o~ 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

in this little game of life. The American peo- 
ple never go back on a man who puts aside 
birth or education and stakes his all upon 
his manhood ; who is willing to share the dan- 
gers and the hardships of his calling. Our 
military men have long since learned this les- 
son, and the son of the general must do the 
same guard duty, make the same marches, 
dig the same trenches, and face the same bul- 
lets as his fellows. His father knows that for 
it to be otherwise would be to handicap 
the son by the contempt of his comrades. 
Like the Spartan mother, he says : "My son, 
return with your shield or upon it." 

Did you ever consider how uncertain a 
quantity is opportunity, as inscrutable as the 
ways of Providence? In all ages and in all 
callings it has been one of the numerous mys- 
teries that make life so attractive. There is 
may a veteran conductor, many a gray-haired 
station agent, who, if he could have had the 
chance to start, would have become a general 
manager. Some men have to go to another 
road to be fully appreciated. When a man 
is young he is criticized if he changes roads. 
When he is older his services are sought be- 
cause of his varied experience with different 

46 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

roads. Human nature is prone to limit the 
length of everybody's train to the capacity of 
its own sidetracks. 

In the spring of 1861 there went from his 
tannery at Galena to the capital of Illinois 
an ex-officer, a professional soldier, whose 
gallantry and efficiency had stood the tests 
of the war with Mexico. Springfield was 
filled with commission seekers, natives of the 
State, and Illinois, like some railroads, did 
not wish to go off her own rails for talent. 
She needed trained clerks to make out muster 
rolls, to book wheel reports in the yard office, 
as it were. This humble employment the si- 
lent soldier accepted with better grace than 
has characterized some former railway offi- 
cials under similar circumstances. The op- 
portunity came in the shape of a mutinous 
regiment, which, like a mountain division, 
was hard to handle. Three years later the 
clerk had run around all the officers, was com- 
manding all the armies of the Union, and 
the world rang with the military fame of 
Ulysses S. Grant. Strange indeed is oppor- 
tunity. Some successful railroad men owe 
their official start to the seeming bad luck of 
being let out as an employe. 

47 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

Your general manager said that he had 
read some of my letters to you; threw me 
a warm jolly by remarking that you are a 
credit to such teaching. Then he confessed 
that he had asked the son if the old man al- 
ways practices what he preaches. I am 
pleased to know from his own lips that you 
uncovered his headlight on that point. 
Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 



LETTER IX. 

CORRESPONDENCE AND TELEGRAMS. 

May 15, 1904. 
My Dear Boy : — You have asked me to say 
something more on the subject of correspond- 
ence and telegrams. In these days of push 
the button for the stenographer, letters and 
telegrams are longer than when the officials 
themselves wrote out communications in 
long-hand. It therefore usually remains for 
employes like yardmasters, conductors and 
operators to preserve the good old terse style 
of the past. Some of them send messages 
that are models of comprehensiveness and 
brevity. When you run across a man who 
is an artist in that sort of thing keep an eye 
on him. The chances are that he uses the 
same good judgment in all of his work; that 
he accomplishes the greatest possible amount 
with the least possible effort; that he takes 
advantage of the easiest and best way; that 
he has the prime requisites of a coming offi- 
cial, namely, a cool head and horse sense. 

49 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

Of course, the matter of terseness can be 
run into the ground. Clearness should not 
be sacrificed to brevity. There is a happy 
medium between the off agin, on agin, gone 
agin, Finnegan, of the Irish section foreman 
and the regretsky to reportsky of the Rus- 
sian general. The point to be gained is to 
avoid repetition and unnecessary words. 
When wiring your office that you will go east 
on Number Two, the word east is superfluous 
for the reason that on your road Number 
Two can not possibly run west. For years 
in our train orders we used the phrase, right 
of track. Then somebody was bright enough 
to think that as Stonewall Jackson is no longer 
hauling locomotives from one line to another 
over the Valley turnpike in Virginia, the 
words "of track" might be cut out. Similar 
amputations have been made in the morning 
delay reports of many roads. 

Human nature is so prone to grasp at the 
shadow rather than the substance that men 
cling to words rather than to ideas. When 
you have written a bulletin directing some- 
thing to be done, do not discount your faith 
in its effect by the introduction of our good 
old friend, "Be Governed Accordingly." We 

So 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

get in the habit of doing a thing simply be- 
cause we have always seen it done and know 
no other way. We paint on the sides of our 
cars such unnecessary words as baggage, 
chair, dining, parlor, furniture, stock, etc., 
etc., just as though these cars were never used 
for anything else; just as though the words 
really served some useful purpose. The people 
who do not know the different kinds of cars 
are beyond the reach of instruction through 
such information. You have heard of the man 
who entered the dining car by mistake and 
asked, "Is this the smoking car?" Where- 
upon a waiter grinned and replied, "No, suh, 
this is the chewin' cah." The Pullman peo- 
ple years ago discontinued the use of the 
words "sleeping car" on their equipment. It 
is not of record that the voices of the car in- 
spectors and the switchmen on the outside 
have awakened any more passengers than 
usual on account of such omission. 

We borrowed from the army and the navy 
the idea of uniforms for employes, brass but- 
tons, gold lace and all. Lately soldiers and 
sailors are wearing plainer, simpler service 
uniforms. We, however, have not taken a 
tumble, perhaps because no one has hit us 

5i 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

with a club, or run into our switch shanty and 
knocked it off the right of way. The cap is 
the essential feature of a trainman's uniform. 
He doesn't exactly talk through it, but its 
badge and ornaments identify his responsi- 
bilities and proclaim his authority. Add to 
the cap a plain blue uniform suit with the 
detachable black buttons the tailor furnishes, 
and you have a very satisfactory result. The 
cap then becomes the only difference between 
the costume for the road and that for the 
street. Where tried, it has been found that 
men wore their best suits on duty and on the 
street, and kept their worn and shabby suits 
to wear around home. At present on nearly 
all roads, as the uniform is too conspicuous 
to be worn off duty, the men are tempted to 
defer buying a new uniform until the old be- 
comes very shabby. It has been found that 
freight crews are easily induced to take ad- 
vantage of the contract price to buy such 
plain uniforms for street wear. Such freight 
crews can be provided with extra caps from 
the office in emergencies and be utilized to 
advantage; sometimes reducing the amount 
of deadhead mileage in making special one- 
way passenger movements. The street rail- 

52 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

way of at least one large city has tried this 
system of plain uniforms with excellent re- 
sults. Why should the most of us be so timid 
that we must have a precedent before we can 
endorse a proposed plan? Like a successful 
after-dinner speaker, I am responding to the 
toast on expression by talking about other 
things. 

In writing important letters or instructions 
it often pays to take the time to sit down and 
make a rough draft with a lead pencil. If 
you have the dictation habit so firmly fixed 
that this is irksome, revise the first draft made 
by the stenographer. Except when writing 
in the familiar style, the third person should 
be used rather than the first or second. The 
use of the second person should be carefully 
avoided in formulating general instructions; 
its use in special instructions to a few indi- 
viduals is sometimes, but rarely, permissible. 
In writing or dictating telegrams figure 
roughly what the message would cost the 
company for transmission at commercial rates, 
and its probable reduction if the price per 
extra word came out of your own pocket. 
As far as possible avoid letting your initials 
become cheap by being used by too many 

53 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

people. If the management do not disap- 
prove, encourage your subordinates to do 
routine business over their own initials or 
over symbols, as S. for superintendent (G. S. 
for general superintendent, and so on), so that 
when your initials come over the wire they 
will indicate personal attention and final ac- 
tion. This, too, has been tried successfully 
in contravention of the fallacy that unques- 
tioning obedience must be rendered even 
when it is known that the official's initials 
have been signed by the office boy. It may 
be remarked in passing, that appreciation and 
fame await the individual who will be able to 
coin some short and expressive words to re- 
place such awkward and cumbrous designa- 
tions as superintendent of motive power, en- 
gineer maintenance of way, assistant to the 
first vice-president, etc., etc. 

Did you ever think how desirable and prac- 
ticable it would be to adopt the Government 
method of addressing the office instead of the 
incumbent by name? We do this with train 
orders, and usually in addressing station 
agents. We should also address "The Super- 
intendent, Getthere Division, Suchtown, 
Somestate," and not use his name unless it is 
54 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

intended as personal and to be opened by him 
alone. 

In all correspondence remember that a 
reprimand, expressed or implied, may be 
taken in a very different sense by the recipient 
from that intended by the sender. Your old 
dad has maintained satisfactory discipline 
among quite a bunch of men on more than 
one trunk line without ever writing a letter 
of reprimand or sending a hot message over 
the wire. The advice of the famous politi- 
cian to walk ten miles to see a man rather 
than write him a letter is paraphrased for our 
business to mean rawhide yourself fifty or a 
hundred miles over the road to jack up a man 
rather than play him a tune on the type- 
writer. Another useful injunction is that of 
a famous soldier and diplomat, "Never under- 
rate yourself in action; never overrate your- 
self in a report." 

Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 



55 



LETTER X. 

THE BAYONET PRECEDES THE GOSPEL. 

May 2.2 3 1904. 
My Dear Boy : — The evolution of the rela- 
tive importance of the several departments in 
railroad work is an interesting study. The 
early railroads were short and usually had 
for president the most important man of af- 
fairs in the community, a banker, a lawyer, a 
publicist, a what-not. Frequently this man 
could not give his whole time to the road and 
he leaned heavily upon his superintendent, 
who, perhaps, had been the engineer in 
charge of construction. The superintendent 
of the early days was general manager on a 
small scale, and with limited facilities had to 
be a man fertile in resources. The superin- 
tendent of to-day is a better man, because the 
race improves all the time, but he performs 
duties of a decidedly different nature. It is 
idle to speculate as to just what he would do 
under primitive conditions. A return to such 
circumstances is impossible. We know that 

56 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

in a pinch our railway officials and employes, 
as a class, are never found wanting. They 
will measure up to standard in the future as 
they have in the past. One fact they must 
never forget is that, like soldiers and sailors, 
their faculties must be so alert, their grasp so 
comprehensive, that they will not get lost 
when the fortunes of the service bring them 
into strange territory. The pace is too swift 
to admit of standing still to get one's bear- 
ings. 

There were few officials and the conductors 
were very important personages. When the 
superintendent needed an assistant it was nat- 
ural to take a conductor who helped around 
the office, ran the pay car and specials, and 
made himself generally useful. Later on, 
train dispatching developed splendid tests of 
executive ability and the official staff was 
recruited by promotions from dispatchers. 
Still later, the growing importance of terminal 
problems gave yardmasters a chance for rec- 
ognition and advancement. 

As West Point was the nursery of the early 
constructing engineers, many of the early 
roads were built and operated by military 
men, whose impress in railway methods hcis 

57 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

survived to this day. When the civil war 
was over the railroads gained for their service 
thousands of men whose ability had stood 
the stern test of camp and battle, men who 
could meet unexpected conditions. These 
men bore the brunt in the wonderful rail- 
road development that secured forever the 
commercial greatness of our country. The 
value of military methods was appreciated by 
them and almost unconsciously such methods 
were copied in organization, in discipline, in 
correspondence. One reason the great Penn- 
sylvania organization is so strong and success- 
ful is the training some of its embryo high 
officials received in the military railway bu- 
reau of the War Department during the great 
conflict. The bayonet always precedes the 
gospel. When the military have cleared the 
wilderness of the savage foe the railroad 
brings a permanent civilization. Witness the 
marvelous growth of the great West during 
the last forty years. 

A majority of the railroads in the country 
at some time or other passed through a re- 
ceivership. Here came a chance for legal 
men, and after reorganizations lawyer presi- 
dents have not been uncommon. At the 

53 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

next stage of development many railroads 
had been built and systems were growing 
larger. The civil engineer, who in earlier 
years would have become the president or 
chief operating official, was now taken care 
of in a newly necessitated department, that of 
maintenance and construction, sufficiently im- 
portant to attract his talents. Following this 
period competition was keen ; it was a struggle 
for existence. The man who could get the 
business was IT. The traffic man had his in- 
ning and, if not president, dictated policies 
and the amount of his own salary and per- 
quisites. With the growth of the community 
of interest idea the traffic man is just as im- 
portant ; but he is no longer wreckmaster, and 
the transportation man is up under the lime 
light near the derrick car. Between the dif- 
ferent dynasties of departments the transpor- 
tation man, like the rock of ages, is always the 
standby and always will be. The other de- 
partments come and go in relative impor- 
tance, but the transportation never shuts off, 
and is there with the sand when the others 
unload from the gangway. 

The revolution in standards of power and 
equipment incident to recent years of tractive 

59 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

units and ton-mile costs has brought the 
mechanical man prominently in front of the 
headlight. Fortunately for himself and for 
the service in general he has not dodged the 
rays when anyone cared to read figures, and 
the way to higher executive positions has not 
been left dark for him. The pendulum is 
already coming back toward the transporta- 
tion man. Whether the next swing will be 
toward the signal engineer or toward the elec- 
trician it is hard to say. 

The lesson a superintendent should learn 
from all this is that he has more and more 
superiors to please, more and more fads to 
follow, more and more improvements to de- 
velop, more and more different points of view 
to reconcile. He must merge his own im- 
portance, his likes and dislikes in the great 
corporation with which he has cast "his lot. If 
his superiors spell traveler with two l's or 
labor with a u, let him do likewise. By so 
yielding he is not losing any manhood. He 
is winning a victory over the crotchety part 
of his individuality and leaving room for its 
development along broader lines. He that 
ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh 
a city. As no man can take a city or do any 
60 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

great work unaided he must learn first to rule 
his own spirit in order that he may rule others 
and gain their heartiest co-operation. The 
superintendent who is habitually calm and po- 
lite, however great the provocation to speak 
angrily, will soon find that if he is firm and 
just his men are worrying even more than 
he lest things go wrong on the division. 

In the matter of discipline there has been 
a great change in sentiment and in method. 
Whether or not it is all advisable is very much 
of a question. There are too many collisions 
in proportion to the improvement in material 
and personnel. In the old days the crew at 
fault, whether they actually got together or 
not, were discharged and forever barred off 
the road. Nowadays we are apt to give them 
another trial on the theory that we are im- 
mune from future mistakes on their part. 
This may or may not be so, but how about 
the effect on others in the service? How 
about the men who are thereby entitled to 
promotion? Is not a failure to make an ex- 
ample of such offenders holding life and 
property too cheap? We may pity the un- 
fortunate blunderers, just as we may pity a 
(Jrunkard or a thief, but their usefulness to 
61 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

us should be over. They may start in again, 
but it must be on some other road. Our 
duty to the public and to our stockholders de- 
mands that the safety of a train should be 
sacred. One of the most absurd conclusions 
is to measure the punishment by the amount 
of damage, according to how straight the 
track happened to be, according to how hard 
they happened to hit. Some railroad sins 
can be forgiven, but drunkenness, chronic or 
periodic; stealing, money or property; and 
collisions, actual or constructive, should be 
unpardonable on any road, however thor- 
oughly they may be blotted out elsewhere. 
Less sentiment and more discharges will 
mean fewer collisions. 

Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 



62 



LETTER XL 

PREVENTING WRECKS BEFORE THEY HAPPEN. 

May 29, 1904. 
My Dear Boy: — An able and successful 
general manager — not all able men and not 
all general managers are successful — recently 
called attention to a most important distinc- 
tion in the training and practice of superin- 
tendents. He says that too much stress is 
laid upon the development of ability to locate 
responsibility after a wreck occurs, and not 
enough upon the quality of controlling cir- 
cumstances, of cultivating precautionary hab- 
its that will prevent disaster. As he aptly 
puts it, the superintendent should be a doc- 
tor, a health officer, rather than a coroner; 
his staff a sanitary commission, a board of 
health to prevent disease rather than a jury 
to determine its causes and effects. Some 
superintendents pride themselves on their 
legal acumen, their ability to cross-examine, 
and on the way they can catch a crew trying 
to lie out of a mix-up. This is all very well if 

63 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

it does not obscure the main object, namely, 
to minimize disaster in the future. The inves- 
tigation serves, perhaps, to determine what 
men to discipline and discharge as an ex- 
ample to others in the service. It should 
also serve as a lesson in official methods. 
However thorough and searching, it cannot 
restore life or return property. The damage 
has been done. All the king's horses and all 
the king's men cannot put Humpty-Dumpty 
together again. 

Some of your men every day will give you 
the old hot air, "As long as there are railroads 
there will be wrecks." To which you should 
hand back the stereotyped reply, "Very true, 
but let's figure on letting the other fellow 
have them." A discreet remark or sugges- 
tion that will put a man to thinking for him- 
self is one of the secrets of success in hand- 
ling men. Never miss an opportunity to 
make the point that wrecks seldom occur 
from the neglect of any one man. It is when 
two or more forget at the same time or fall 
down together that trouble results. Impress 
on the brakeman the fact that the very stop 
he neglects to flag is the time when the oper- 
ator is most likely to let two trains in the 

64 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

same block. Remind your conductor that 
when he fails to read the orders to the en- 
gineman in person and sends them forward 
by the porter or the head brakeman, that is 
the very trip the orders get torn or smeared 
so that a fatal mistake results. When a pas- 
senger train breaks in two the air usually sets 
on both portions. It fails to do so when bums 
or misplaced safety chains have turned the 
angle cocks ; and that is the time there should 
be a trainman riding in the rear car. Men 
will tell you so and so cannot happen, but 
next week it does happen just the same. The 
whistle hose and the brake hose cannot be 
coupled together because the connections are 
purposely made of a different pattern. A 
green apprentice coupling an engine to a ten- 
der at a roundhouse managed to pound to- 
gether the couplings of the wrong pairs of 
hose, which the engine inspector had failed 
to notice were badly worn. That was the 
day the car inspectors neglected to try the 
signal and the air before the train left the ter- 
minal. By a strange fatality the conductor 
trusted the car men for the station test. The 
engineman was too busy to make a running- 
test. They all got wise when the air wouldn't 

65 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

work at the first railroad crossing. Watch 
the inspectors to see that they do not form 
the lazy habit of giving the signal to try the 
air from the next to the last car, of walking 
only half the length of the train to see the 
pistons and the brakeshoes. Never wink at 
an irregularity of that sort. It will come 
back to plague you a hundredfold. Go right 
after it quietly, but promptly and effectually. 
Do not wait for disaster or for investigation 
by your superiors to tell you that a loose 
practice prevails. Get such information with 
your own senses or from observations of your 
staff. 

It is vigilance, eternal vigilance, that is the 
price of safety. Teach your men that a hun- 
dred successes do not justify an avoidable 
failure, that twenty years of faithful service 
cannot condone criminal carelessness. A fun- 
damental is that when backing up there 
should always be a man on the rear end. 
Educate your men to feel that neglect of this 
wise precaution is just as mortifying as to ap- 
pear in public without clothes. In shoving 
long cuts of cars without using air, get your 
brakemen and switchmen to feel a pride in 
setting a hand brake on the end car to take 
66 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

the slack and save the jerk on the drawbars. 
Work for the old-time feeling of chagrin 
that came to the calloused-armed passenger 
brakeman, in the days of Armstrong brakes, 
when he did not go after them soon enough 
and let his train run by the station. The men 
are hot to blame for this loss of pride and 
interest. We, the officials, are at fault. We 
have not kept ahead of the game. We have 
been coroners, not sanitary inspectors. 

If an engine is waiting at a hand derail or 
at a crossover for a train, neither switch 
should be thrown until the train has passed. 
Then, if the throttle happens to fly open at 
just the wrong moment, the train will not be 
sideswiped. If not trained, your switchmen 
will throw every switch possible beforehand 
so as to be ready. They may think such pre- 
cautions are old womanish, but the time will 
come when your wisdom will be vindicated. 
If a train is waiting for a connection, with a 
siding switch in rear, the facing point switch 
should be opened, so that if the incoming 
man loses his air or misjudges distances the 
train will not be hit. Similarly a flagman 
going back to protect a train between switches 
should open the siding switch as he passes it. 

67 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

The switch is more effectual than a torpedo, 
and if a following train happens to get by him 
and his torpedoes his own train will not be 
hit. He should flag just the same, because a 
train entering the open switch too fast might 
turn over. It is better to take a chance on a 
derailment than on a collision. It is better 
still to have such training, vigilance and dis- 
cipline that there will be little chance of either 
disaster. 

Train your men to do things because they 
are right, because it is manly to do good rail- 
roading. Then, when you hold an investiga- 
tion you will not find at the moment the acci- 
dent happened that the engineman was prim- 
ing his injector, the fireman putting in a fire, 
the head brakeman shoveling down coal, the 
conductor sorting his bills, and the hind man 
starting to boil coffee for supper. 

There is hardly a conductor or an engine- 
man of any length of service who has not at 
some time overlooked an order or a train. 
When he has forgotten, his partner has re- 
membered. The trouble has come, bad luck, 
they call it, when they both forgot. Many a 
$50 operator has saved the job of a $150 
engineman. Keep your men keyed up to the 
68 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

idea that this is too uncertain ; that each must 
watch his own job, that in so doing he may 
keep his comrade out of the hole, that by 
conscientious vigilance he becomes a better 
man and more of a credit to his calling. No 
man wilfully courts danger to life and prop- 
erty. His failures are an accompaniment, a 
concomitant they call it in logic, of officials 
being better coroners than they are doctors. 
Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 



6g 



LETTER XII. 

THE SELF-MADE MAN WHO WORSHIPS HIS MAKER. 

June 5, 1904. 
My Dear Boy: — I once heard General 
Sheridan, my old commander, say that when 
he was a lieutenant he made up his mind to be 
the best lieutenant in his regiment; that in 
every grade to which promotion brought him 
he strove to be the best; that he attributed 
his high rank to this consistent effort. Right 
here is a moral that many a railroad man 
should apply to himself. Although Sheridan's 
comrades at West Point and in the service 
knew his efficiency, the powers that were in 
1 86 1 found no higher position for him than 
that of captain and assistant quartermaster. 
During the first year of the civil war, while 
politicians were called colonels and lawyers 
tried to be generals, this trained soldier was 
inspecting horses and mules in the Southwest, 
a veterinary's work. Some men, disheart- 
ened by such apparent inappreciation, would 
have lost interest, would have let the con- 

70 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

tractor palm off inferior animals on the gov- 
ernment. Not so with the future commander 
of the army. He tried all the harder and his 
work was efficient, clean and honest. In the 
spring of 1862 a Michigan cavalry regiment 
needed a colonel and the officer hailing from 
Ohio, who had bought horses so well, had a 
chance to drill both horses and men, A year 
and a half later he was commanding a divi- 
sion of infantry, and six months after that as 
major general a corps of cavalry. Popular 
opinion pictures Sheridan as a dashing 
fighter, executing the plans of some one else. 
Never was there a more incomplete concep- 
tion. No matter how hard had been the fight- 
ing, how wearing the march, it was Sheridan 
who rose in the night to see that the sleep- 
ing camp or bivouac did not suffer from lax- 
ity in guard duty, that all was ready for the 
plans of the morrow. The general manager 
did not have to tell him that the switch lamps 
on his division were not burning. The gen- 
eral superintendent did not have to wire him 
that his water cranes were out of order. The 
superintendent of motive power did not have 
to complain that his enginemen were not 
kept in line. The traffic manager did not 

71 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

lose freight because his night terminals be- 
came congested. 

There is many a railroad man who has lost 
heart and lessened his usefulness because an 
honest but inappreciative management has 
promoted the wrong man. Then is the time 
to come out strong, to try harder than before 
to be appreciated. The world has little use 
for soreheads. The more strenuous the con- 
ditions the less sympathy for the sulker in the 
tent. Be game and do not kick for rest. The 
sleeve is no place to wear a wounded heart. 
Do not put up a squeal about nepotism. As 
long as man loves woman and that woman's 
children the relatives of the management will 
always be the easiest for the promotion call- 
boy to find. Remember that though they be 
marked up first out, there are other runs to 
be filled; that sooner or later there are 
chances for more crews to get out. If you 
find flaws in the reasons announced for cer- 
tain appointments, forget them in the 
thought that honesty of purpose is a distin- 
guishing characteristic of operating manage- 
ment. Not only look pleasant but head off 
the efforts of foolish friends to form a volun- 
teer grievance committee in your behalf. 

n 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

Assuming that you are trying to be the 
best division superintendent, remember that 
in the final roundup it is not your own ideas 
of success that must prevail. You may know 
that you are stronger and better than the 
official who gets the preferred run. You may 
know that it would be best for the company 
to have you run around him. All the men 
on the division may unconsciously feel your 
superior ability. They may all swear by you 
and make your name almost sacred around 
the lunch counter and the caboose track. All 
this will not count for full value if you do not 
please your superiors. When the general 
manager comes on your division you must be 
ready for any kind of a statistical run. He 
has not time to wait for you to oil around. 
His every hour is valuable and like all busy 
men he forms his opinions in a hurry. Re- 
member that until we know men intimately 
we judge them by standards more or less arti- 
ficial, but usually pretty accurate in the ag- 
gregate. Thus a man who is careless and 
untidy in his dress is apt to overlook little 
essentials in the management of men and 
affairs. The dandy is almost never a coward ; 
for, if physical courage be lacking, his pride 

73 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

supplies its place. The superintendent whose 
desk is in confusion probably has untidy sta- 
tions and dirty coaches. The man who 
slouches coatless into his superior's office and 
sprawls into a chair before being invited to 
sit down is likely to be equally inconsiderate 
of the public his company serves. The to- 
bacco lover who cannot refrain from smoking 
or chewing the few minutes he is close to the 
throne will probably not inherit much of the 
kingdom of advancement. The man who 
clings to the George Washington habit of 
eating with his knife and the Thomas Jeffer- 
son custom of drinking from his saucer has 
the burden of proof on him to show that he is 
not unobservant of progress in other things 
and is not generally behind the times. The 
self-made man in so many cases worships his 
maker that he forgets the divinity that doth 
hedge a king. The man above may be no 
better, perhaps not as good, morally, men- 
tally, physically and socially, but officially he 
is the superior in fact as well as in name. 
Familiarity breeds contempt and the more re- 
spect you show your superior the more dig- 
nity you are conferring upon yourself, the 
less likely are your own subordinates to for- 

74 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

get the respect that is due your position. 
Self-restraint and mental poise cultivate an 
unconscious dignity of character that is of 
immeasurable value in the handling of men. 
Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee, men of 
radically different types but alike in being 
idolized by their people, were popular heroes, 
although neither was addressed, even by his 
intimates, by his first name. The highest 
compliment you can pay an associate or a 
subordinate is to address him in private by 
his first name. It shows either that you have 
known him a long time or that you think 
enough of him to separate him from his pay- 
roll designation. 

One of the amiable failings of human na- 
ture is to be self-satisfied, a condition that in 
our profession is probably intensified. We 
railroad men have to think and act in such a 
hurry that we become very cocksure of our- 
selves. We have so little time for introspec- 
tion that we often regard the science of rail- 
roading as putting it on the other fellow. 
When disaster occurs, no matter how de- 
fective may have been our equipment, how 
parsimonious our policy, how lax our dis- 
cipline, we cry out long and loud at the un- 

75 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

trustworthiness of employes, at the deca- 
dence of company spirit, at the growing evils 
of the labor unions. An intelligent public 
usually gets on to us, however, and we pay 
for such mental and vocal pyrotechnics with 
compound interest. It will profit us to do a 
little more self-examination, to copy the pub- 
lican rather than the pharisee. The conductor 
who burns off journals will assure us of his 
distinguished concern and of his constant in- 
junctions to his brakemen to watch for hot 
boxes. The superintendent who rawhides his 
men will tell you with tears in his voice how 
necessary it is to be considerate of the boys 
on the road. The general superintendent who 
sends long and unnecessary telegrams will 
deplore with you the tendency of the traffic 
department to burden the wires. All these 
are good men and true, but they have not 
formed the habit of healthy, honest self-criti- 
cism. Strong, indeed, is the man who can 
stand up and say, like Lee at Gettysburg, "I 
was in command and responsible. If anyone 
is to blame I am the man." 

The greatest of executives are those who 
can make men think for themselves, who can 
work men and have them believe they are 
76 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

playing, who can suggest a new thought to a 
man and leave him with the idea that he 
originated it himself. A great deal of effort 
is lost, a vast amount of mental force is wasted 
in trying to convince people that you alone 
originated an idea or a movement. Bury 
such a thought in the results produced, for it 
is results we are after. Get your satisfaction 
in said results and your amusement in the 
honest self-glorification of some unconscious 
borrower who has utilized your idea. It 
doesn't pay to he too much of an originator. 
If you have advanced ideas, keep yourself in 
the background or you may kill the ideas. 
Men find the old alignment so familiar that 
they are slow to want curves replaced by 
tangents. If you are too ubiquitous with sug- 
gestions they will become leery of your good 
judgment and will unconsciously set the fish 
tail when you whistle into town. If you will 
run past the distant signal and find your 
superior at the home, some of the best stops 
for the suggestion derail are: "You doubt- 
less have considered the advisability of thus 
and so;" or, "I assume you are not quite 
ready to decide the question of hit or miss ;" 
or, "As you were saying the other day, we 

77 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

are losing money by deadheading crews ;" or. 
"I hope you will be able to carry out your 
idea of introducing train staffs f or, "On fur- 
ther consideration, do you care to recom- 
mend adopting lap sidings for the new exten- 
sion ?" etc. Of course this kind of a sand valve 
must not be opened too wide or too often or 
some of the soft soap will get on the detector 
bar and violate the interlocking rules. 
Affectionately, your own 

D.A.D. 



73 



LETTER XIII. 

THE FRIEND-MILE AS A UNIT OF MEASURE. 

June 12, 1904. 
My Dear Boy : — Your chief dispatcher blew 
through here the other day on his vacation 
and dropped in to pay his respects. He 
rather apologized for so doing, as he seemed 
to think it might be considered an intrusion 
to call on a stranger. I took it as a compli- 
ment to myself and as a mark of his loyalty 
to you. It is so easy for us old fellows to for- 
get that we were once junior officials our- 
selves that I rather like to keep in touch with 
those who are to come after and maintain the 
time-honored standards of the profession. I 
never like to say very much about my desire 
to acquire information from everyone I meet, 
for experience has made me a little leery of 
the man who whistles too long for that sta- 
tion. He is apt to toot his own horn so 
much that he doesn't hear the other fellow's 
signals. So I tried not to do all the talking, 
and did not tell my guest of the great im- 

79 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

provements I had made since I came to this 
position. I preferred to let him hear that 
from someone else. If one should take too 
literally the talk of the officials on whom he 
calls he would wonder how the road ever ran 
before each held down his particular job ; how 
there can possibly be any improvement made 
by those who come after. No, I do not advo- 
cate hiding one's light under a bucket in the 
cab all the time — only when running. 

The world is getting to place more and 
more confidence in the man who thinks out 
loud. It trusts him because he is not doubt- 
ful of himself. The stunt of looking wise and 
not expressing an opinion when a suggestion 
is made is no longer popular. A non-com- 
mittal promise to look into the matter may be 
construed as a mask for ignorance or tim- 
idity. The more a man knows the more 
frankly he acknowledges that a certain idea 
is new to him. Men to whom talking and 
writing do not come easy sometimes say be- 
ware of the windy man, but there are some 
mighty efficient railroaders who act and per- 
form all the better for being able to handle 
words. Hot air is all right if properly com- 
pressed. The idle breeze dries the ground 
80 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

and runs windmills. Sand bites the rail in 
more economical quantities when fed down 
by the pneumatic attachment. Every division 
has its Windy Bill, its Chattering Charlie, its 
Gasbag George; but some way, when they 
are on the road you always feel safe. They 
may work a con game on some of the agents 
and dispatchers, but they get over the road 
with the local. You feel good when you meet 
them. The man you want to run from is 
Calamity Jake, who always has a tale of woe 
as long as a gravel train. His caboose rides 
rough; its stove smokes; the caller doesn't 
give him time enough for his wife to cook 
breakfast; the yardmaster saves all the shop 
cripples for his train ; he can't trust the igno- 
rant engineers; the brakemen are all farmers, 
and the signal oil won't burn. If you tell him 
that's all right, that you will try and correct 
all these things when the car accountant's 
office stops kicking on his wheel reports, he 
will look at you in sympathetic sadness and 
bewail the modern tendency to make clerks 
of conductors. 

Your chief dispatcher is a fine fellow and 
understands the art of getting away. He 
didn't wear out his welcome but broke away 
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Letters From A Railway Official. 

while making a good impression. You have 
to unlock the switch for some men before 
they can couple their crossings and get out 
of town. The dispatcher has to send the 
operator outside with a clearance. Acquaint- 
ance is one of a young man's most valuable 
assets, and a two minutes' interview may 
grade the way for a lifelong run. Before the 
world was as good as it is now, men rather 
prided themselves on the number of enemies 
they had made. Nowadays the friend mile 
is a more desirable unit of measure. 

Washington Irving puts it very prettily 
where he says, "for who is there among us 
who does not like now and then to play the 
sage?" So I felt rather flattered when your 
chief dispatcher asked me for advice as to 
what to study in order to get on in the rail- 
way world. I told him first of all to read 
every bit of company literature that he could 
get hold of; not to skim through a part of 
the pamphlet on refrigerator cars and guess 
at the rest. A table of freight rates may be- 
come interesting if properly approached. Do 
not try to memorize data and statistics, but 
rather plod through them at least once with 
a view to trying to master the principles that 
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Letters From A Railway Official. 

govern. Life is very full in this twentieth 
century, but, broadly speaking, it is still pos- 
sible to know something of everything as 
well as everything of something. The day is 
coming when we will not entrust a man with 
the important duties and the great responsi- 
bilities of a division superintendent until we 
have given him a brief course in every depart- 
ment. We examine a man before we let him 
run an engine, but how about the man who 
runs him? A superintendent should know 
enough about an engine to handle the engine- 
men just as he does the trainmen. L When 
we have men successfully running engines 
who can barely read and write, it is a mistake 
to claim that a locomotive is such a sacred 
mystery that only the mechanical department 
can judge whether or not it is properly 
handled. Enginemen are transportation men, 
and the time that master mechanics put in 
assigning crews, keeping an age book, and 
otherwise duplicating the superintendent's 
work might a great deal better be given to 
the back shop. The yardmaster has one 
caller and the roundhouse foreman another. 
The two callers go up the same street, some- 
times together, and call men in adjoining 

83 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

houses, an expensive duplication of work. 
The trainmaster rides in the caboose and the 
traveling engineer — road foreman is the 
modern term — in the engine, but neither 
dares presume to know the business of the 
other. Every trainmaster should be a travel- 
ing engineer and every traveling engineer 
should be a trainmaster. That will be the 
case when we train officials along more defi- 
nite lines. Honey bees feed their future queen 
a special food. No, I would not decrease the 
number of officials, if anything I would in- 
crease it. I would not, however, let every 
official created have a chief clerk and a sten- 
ographer. I would make it impossible for 
him to yield to the temptation to add a 
bureau of records to the amount of useless 
information already on file. I wouldn't lose 
my nerve if now and then a set of ancient 
papers got lost, for with less red tape quicker 
action would result and little would get away. 
The first time the trainmaster had to wait an 
hour or two before he could dictate a letter 
in the superintendent's office, or could use a 
stenographer in his own office, he would beef 
for a separate establishment. If more help 
should be needed, which would be very 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

doubtful, put it on, but do not limit its use- 
fulness to any one official. With a proper, 
responsible head it is entirely feasible to carry 
the community of interest idea into office or- 
ganization. If the division engineer is under 
the superintendent, why, in sending papers 
into the next room to him, write a letter and 
burden your files with the carbon of the 
stereotyped, "Kindly note next attached and 
take necessary action ?" Is not his office a 
part of the superintendent's? Have you not 
the same right to papers there that you have 
to those in the office of the chief dispatcher? 
Why not go even further and have one chief 
clerk and one set of records for the whole 
outfit, just as an assistant superintendent can 
handle a part of the work without having a 
separate force? If you ever rearrange an 
office building, fix it so that the casual visitor 
waiting to see the boss jvill not learn state 
secrets by hearing the chief clerk dictate 
letters. , 

A number of roads have tried the experi- 
ment of putting the enginemen and the 
roundhousemen solely under the superinten- 
dent, and of confining the master mechanic 
to his proper function of running the shops. 

85 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

It has usually failed; not on account of in- 
herent weakness as a system, but because the 
superintendent didn't superintend, and found 
it too convenient to try to shift the responsi- 
bility to the mechanical department. Reform 
has to begin at the top, and if the division is 
to be the unit the superintendent must be 
something more than a high-class chief dis- 
patcher finding flaws in train sheets. It is 
not enough for him to be a star division en- 
gineer, a boss yardmaster. He must remem- 
ber that his holding of any of these positions 
is ancient history, not to be forgotten, be- 
cause valuable and instructive, but neverthe- 
less a thing of the past. As the yardmaster 
and the dispatcher must scatter their trains, 
so the superintendent must keep his staff 
doing different things. He must avoid hav- 
ing two men doing the same thing. If it is 
better to call the roundhouse foreman a mas- 
ter mechanic and invent a title for the man 
behind the back shop, let us do so ; but by all 
means avoid working the master mechanic at 
present as foreman, head caller, road time- 
keeper and roundhouse clerk. The superin- 
tendent can boss all these jobs, and transpor- 
tation, including its operating attributes, 

86 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

must focus at his office. It is not the super- 
intendent who works the most hours who is 
the most successful. It is he who puts in the 
best licks at the right time, night or day, and 
with the right man or men. 

I told your chief dispatcher that a knowl- 
edge of law is as important to a real superin- 
tendent as a knowledge of telegraphy. I 
advised him to give himself the pleasure of 
reading Cooky's edition of Blackstone, 
which, if taken in homeopathic doses, is one 
of the clearest things in the language. Every 
superintendent gets to be more or less of a 
lawyer. It should not be necessary to refer 
every little fire or stock claim to the legal de- 
partment for some of its students to render 
a profound opinion upon a matter of common 
sense. It is so easy to follow the line of least 
resistance that we too often evade responsi- 
bility by throwing up our hands and saying 
that such and such is a legal question, a 
mechanical matter, or a traffic problem. We 
gracefully pass it up to the other fellow, and 
think we are in to clear when an investiga- 
tion happens to come. By and by, oblivious 
cf the relation between cause and effect, we 
deplore the curtailment of our authority and 
inveigh against centralization. 
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Letters From A Railway Official. 

I had some other ideas to set out for you, 
but we have drifted so near the switch that 
there is not room enough to make a drop 
of the caboose. So I shall either pull the 
whole train into the yard or get permission 
from the yardmaster to cut off on the main, 
and like an orthodox conductor, leave them 
for the night men to switch out. We con- 
ductors feel that, as a switch engine lies 
around the most of the time, it can always do 
at least one more job, besides having time to 
shove us out of the yard and over the hill. 
Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 



LETTER XIV. 

THE MANAGEMENT THAT BREEDS FROM ITS OWN 
HERD. 

June 19, 1904. 

My Dear Boy : — History repeats itself, and 
railroad history is made so fast that we re- 
peat ourselves very often. Mankind absorbs 
a certain amount from the experience of 
others. In spite of the much good that 
comes, the same old fallacies are followed, the 
same old blunders are made. Within the last 
fifty years every road in the country, at some 
time or other, has undergone at least one re- 
organization and a corresponding radical 
change in personnel. Always, after several 
new camels get their heads under the tent, 
comes a newspaper pronuneiamento that 
thereafter the management will breed from its 
own herd. This inbreeding invariably leads 
ultimately to narrowness if not to deteriora- 
tion. The cousins intermarry too often and 
ere long the road is breeding its own scrubs. 

Within the last five years every road in the 

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Letters From A Railway Official. 

country has gone outside its own ranks for 
official talent. The oldest roads have had 
only a few Leonard Woods and Fred Fun- 
stons, a president here, a vice-president there. 
Other roads have changed officials so fast that 
one is reminded of the traveler sojourning in 
Faris during the French Revolution. He in- 
structed his servant to tell him every morning 
what the weather was, that he might know 
how to dress himself, and what the govern- 
ment was, that he might know how to con- 
duct himself. What then of our boasted civil 
service; of the wonderful administrative ma- 
chines we build up and find wanting? Is the 
principle wrong or is its application faulty? 
The earnest efforts of able men, crowned by 
many partial successes, are sufficient guaran- 
tee of honesty of purpose, of the necessity for 
something of the sort that has been attempted. 
He who criticises, be he ever so honest, must 
suggest a practical remedy or he soon de- 
scends from the level of the critic to that of 
the demagogue or the common scold. 

Our trouble seems to be, not with civil 
service as an abstract proposition, but with 
the type we have been getting. It is about 
Z-99 as compared with the real thing. It has 

90 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

too many flat wheels to run smoothly. It 
must be jacked up high enough for new 
trucks and a stronger kingbolt. True civil 
service presupposes maximum care in original 
selection. It doesn't mean that we shall wait 
until the grain and the coal begin to move 
before we figure on more crews. It rather 
contemplates having available firemen in 
wipers, and willing brakemen in clerks. Every 
superintendent believes that he is the best 
judge of men on the pike. On every system 
are probably men who can give him cards and 
spades, picked coal and treated water, and 
then outclass him on such a run. If we leave 
the hiring to the different trainmasters, mas- 
ter mechanics, or agents, we may have mostly 
the Irish on one division, mostly the Dutch 
on another. If we are going into this civil 
service business and are taking men, like Fed- 
eral judges, for life or during good behavior, 
let's have a long list of waiting eligibles re- 
cruited for each division. Let's send around 
periodically a car with an examining board 
from central headquarters to size up the tal- 
ent recommended by local officials. Put ex- 
perienced officials, a surgeon and an oculist 
on the committee. Show your trainmaster 

9i 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

that men who make it a business have more 
time than he to keep dudes and cigarette 
smokers off the runboard and the payroll; 
that the former have broader opportunities 
than he to develop a high standard of require- 
ments. Let the committee encourage men 
already employed to demonstrate their fitness 
for transfer to other departments or to heavier 
divisions. Let's change ends with our rail 
and put it where it will do the most good. 
The employment bureau, the recruiting office, 
or the civil service commission becomes a 
necessity to every large organization. Some 
roads have made a start in this direction, but 
it is only a start. To work out the problem 
will cost us money. Yes, but less than we 
are being forced to pay by some of the labor 
contracts we have had to sign. It is not only 
more graceful, it is less expensive, this lead- 
ing instead of being driven. 

The great trouble seems to be in this matter 
of civil service that we have tried to accom- 
plish too much in too short a time. An indus- 
try whose existence does not antedate the 
memory of men still living cannot hope to 
have struck the best methods already. Yet 
it can be too cautious in building Chinese 
92 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

walls around its organization. What we have 
been striving for is to cultivate a company 
spirit, to improve the efficiency of the service. 
We have felt that the way to do this is to 
make our men feel secure in their positions, to 
have them convinced that the shakeup made 
by our advent is the last they will ever expe- 
rience. Have we not chased this rainbow 
long enough? Should we not back up and 
draw some of the spikes we have put in the 
connection switches? It is one thing to sit 
in an office and figure that the importation of 
this one man ought not to make anybody un- 
easy. It is quite another to make the thou- 
sands of men along the road believe that we 
can stick to the original package. Blood is 
thicker than water and the new man will have 
his relatives and his followers or the followers 
of his friends. If he is too thin-skinned, fear 
of criticism may prevent his bringing in some 
new talent that would be of real benefit to his 
road. He is blamed if he does and blamed if 
he doesn't. Whichever course he pursues 
there remains, in greater or less degree, that 
uncertainty which is so demoralizing. Re- 
move this uncertainty, let men know definitely 
what to expect, and you are over the hill and 
closer to the terminal. 
93 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

The old-fashioned rule of promote two and 
hire one worked mighty well on some roads 
for conductors and enginemen. In these days 
of larger systems the ratio might be changed 
to three or four or even five or six to one. 
If it were definitely understood that every so 
often, say every fifth vacancy in certain grades 
of officials and employes, a man would cer- 
tainly be selected from outside the service, I 
believe that we could remove the feeling of 
uncertainty. We would in a large measure 
attain the result we have thus far missed. We 
would build up organizations with enough 
fresh blood to stand the test of time. 

Brains and adaptability are not a natural 
monopoly. God Almighty hasn't given any 
road a New Jersey charter broad enough for 
incorporating a trust of the most efficient 
men. No, I am not a populist or a socialist. 
I believe in trusts. They have come to stay 
and ultimately to benefit the masses. Legis- 
lation will no more succeed in destroying 
them than it did in preventing partnerships in 
England where centuries ago it was thought 
for two men to unite as partners in business 
was an unsafe combination of power. Educa- 
tion comes by hard knocks and probably anti- 

94 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

merger decisions are worth the inconvenience 
that they have caused. The sober sense of the 
American people will tell them after a while 
that in attempting constitutional and legisla- 
tive interference they have not benefited 
themselves one dollar. They will learn that 
forcing a change of methods does not neces- 
sarily bring about a different result. They 
will learn that in the long run they, the people, 
are the losers when good capital is tied up; 
that they pay the price for unwise competi- 
tion. The railroads, the first great trusts, 
should be early to realize that some conditions 
inherently forbid the elimination of compe- 
tition. Our prairies are too broad for an agri- 
cultural trust. The range of the human mind 
is too great for any railroad to patent the 
ability of its men. 

This trust freight seems to make you full 
tonnage without cleaning out all the rush 
stuff in my yard. You may cut off ahead of 
the rest of the civil service loads and I will 
have a pony set on your caboose when you 
pull through the ladder. Yes, I will tell the 
operator at the yard office to scratch them 
off your consist. I shall have to run another 
section and fill out with some cars of com- 

95 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

pany material which the construction depart- 
ment is kicking about. Please put up— 
excuse me, display — signals until the dis- 
patcher can get hold of you at the end of the 
double track. By the way, if instead of "will 
display signals, etc.," his order should read, 
"will signal, etc.,' , would it not be shorter 
and, including flags, lamps, whistle and voice, 
be more comprehensive? 

Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 



06 



LETTER XV. 

MORE ON CIVIL SERVICE. 

June 26, 1904. 

My Dear Boy : — We were speaking of rail- 
road civil service, so called. As I told you 
before, our civil service is so far from the 
genuine article that I always feel like qualify- 
ing the term in some way for fear of being 
called in on the carpet for failure to cut the 
proper duplex. It is a great big subject, 
worthy of the most serious consideration, be- 
cause it concerns men, not machines. Fur- 
thermore, it is a high type of man with whom 
we deal or should deal. We are all so busy 
that we say we concern ourselves with re- 
sults. We all butt in too much on details, 
usually along the line of our early training. 
Yet, withal, we overlook some pretty long 
shots because we flatter ourselves we are too 
busy to place small bets. 

Even after we have wasted so much of the 
building season that we give the contractor a 
bonus to rush the new line to completion in 

97 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

time to hold the charter, wouldn't it pay us 
to have a care as to the kind of men we let 
him work on our right of way? Next year, 
when the grievance committees come up 
from the new division, we make them feel 
that it means something, it gives them a 
stamp of honor to work for our system. 
[Why not begin a little farther back? Why 
not hook up in the beginning so that our 
different departments can get busy early in 
the game? Let the people who are to settle 
the new country help build and maintain 
the road. Let the immigration agent camp 
with the reconnoitering engineer. When the 
latter comes back to locate or retrace, let 
the former be interesting colonies. Let our 
own organization follow the surveyor's flag. 
Let's be our own contractor and get back 
more of the money he disburses. W 7 hy let a 
floating gang of Dagoes take so big a bunch 
of it back to sunny Italy? Why not spend 
it ourselves so that its recipients will use it 
to develop the country and hurry the origi- 
nation of traffic? Let's handle this coin both 
going and coming and cut out some of the 
empty haul. 

The political revolutions in continental 

98 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

Europe and the famine in Ireland in 1848 
brought to this country a high class of im- 
migrants. We gave them work and schools. 
They helped build the railroads. Some con- 
tinued on the roads after construction ; others 
helped develop the surrounding country. 
Our flag made them free, and when civil war 
came they were among the bravest of its 
defenders. To-day their children and their 
children's children, all Americans, rank high 
among railway officials and employes. Per- 
haps all this is a happen so ; perhaps much of 
it is due to big, brainy men whose policies 
were not narrowed by specialization in de- 
partments. We are now doing little new con- 
struction. We should do it better than ever 
and in the full sense of the word. Is it 
enough to pass it up to the construction de- 
partment? 

Did it ever strike you that there may be 
many good reasons why both officials and 
employes may desire to transfer to another 
road? A young man, feeling the home nest 
too full, the local demand for skilled labor 
too light, has struck out for a newer coun- 
try. He makes good. We find him in after 
years running an engine, working a trick, or, 

99 



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Letters From A Railway Official. 

perchance, holding down an official job. 
Death occurs at the old home. Marriage 
brings new interests in another country. An 
invalid member of his family needs a change 
of climate. An unexpected development of a 
chance investment in a remote locality de- 
mands occasional personal attention. The 
orphaned children of a relative claim his pro- 
tection. Any one of a dozen praiseworthy 
motives may prompt him to make a change, 
provided he can continue to derive his main 
support from the calling to which he has 
found himself adapted. 

Would he be able to transfer without be- 
ginning over again at the bottom? Between 
the civil service of the companies and the 
seniority of the brotherhoods he would find 
it like making a link and pin coupling on the 
inside of a sharp curve. He would be lucky if 
he could get a regular job on another divi- 
sion of the same system. Let him persist in 
suggestions as to how the matter may be 
brought about, and the average official, hide- 
bound by precedent, will consider him nutty, 
a candidate for the crazy house instead of for 
another run. Who is the loser? Not only the 
man, but the company, which should have the 

TOO 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

benefit of his wider experience, of his peculiar 
interest in its territory, of the infusion of 
fresh blood which his advent would mean. 

Suppose an official has resigned for any 
good personal reason, or because he couldn't 
reduce the size of the engine nozzles fast 
enough to suit a new management. .When 
he starts out to hunt a job his brethren of the 
profession receive him with sympathy. They 
promise to help him out. Each begs him to 
understand how impossible it is for him to 
catch the pay car on that particular line. Per- 
haps his informant has been on that com- 
pany's payroll only six months himself, but 
he waxes eloquent on the benefits of civil 
service, on the desirability of making their 
own men, of overcoming previous demorali- 
zation. This would be amusing if it were not 
a serious business. Each seems to flatter him- 
self that he got aboard because of peculiar 
personal fitness, and inferentially denies such 
attribute of genius in the man on the outside. 
As a matter of fact, the recognition of outside 
talent is usually a consequence of acquaint- 
ance, of happening to know the right man 
at the right time, of having previously 
worked with the appointing official. All this 

IOI 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

contains too much of the element of chance. 
When we reserve certain vacancies for men 
outside of the breastworks and select them in 
advance we shall get better results. 

We have made our civil service frogs so 
stiff that our discipline has climbed the rail. 
We know it is so hard for a conductor or an 
engineman to get a job that we sometimes 
hesitate too long before we make an example 
for the good of the service by discharging a 
flagrant offender. If we knew that by and 
by he could hit on some road the vacancy 
reserved for outsiders we would have the ben- 
efit of the change. The man would learn a 
lesson, would not be debarred from his occu- 
pation, and would give better service on an- 
other road. Talk with your employes about 
this and you will be astonished to find how 
many will fall in with this idea of leaving 
open a door of hope by filling just so many 
vacancies with outside men. 

Your official or your employe seeking a 
transfer or hunting a job will be impressed 
with the fact that all assistance rendered will 
be with a view to favoring him because he is 
a good, worthy fellow. He will not hear it 
put on the ground that any company is for- 

102 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

tunate to have his services, that his future em- 
ployers are being especially considered. If he 
has known from boyhood the territory and 
civilization where he desires to work, it will 
not be urged as a special qualification. Right 
here is where the most of us fall down. We 
too seldom make our subordinates feel that 
we are the gainers by having them in our 
employ. We are too likely to make them fee! 
they are lucky to have a job. This may do 
for the indifferent men, but it puts no pre- 
mium on superior ability and loyalty. It ren- 
ders a discharge, when made, less effective 
as an example. You cannot treat all your 
men alike in all things. In a few things, col- 
lisions, stealing, booze-fighting, for example, 
you have to do so. In most things you must 
avoid destroying individuality. You must 
build up personal pride in each. Even sister 
engines of the same type do not steam or 
pull exactly alike. Man, made in the image 
of Deity, has pride, brains and courage to 
make more complex his disposition. Corpo- 
rations have no souls. Railroad men have 
souls and good red blood. Their intelligence 
is an inspiration ; their steadfastness, a psalm. 
Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 
103 



LETTER XVI. 

' THE SUPPLY TRAIN. 

July 3, 1904. 
My Dear Boy: — -Blacksmiths' horses and 
shoemakers' wives proverbially go unshod. 
A railroad puts up its poorest sample of trans- 
portation in the routine handling of its own 
material and supplies. Company stuff is 
moved and handled last of all; and probably 
at maximum expense. For example, if we 
wish to ship a car of wheels to division head- 
quarters we load them after we are lucky 
enough to get an available car. Then after 
proper billing authority has been furnished 
we go through some more red tape, so that 
the auditor may not confuse figs with thistles, 
revenue producers with deadheads. When 
we happen to have a train with such light 
tonnage that all excuses for moving the car 
have been exhausted it reaches the yard near- 
est its destination. The master mechanic's 
office in a day or two has pounded sufficiently 
at the yardmaster to get the car set, usually 
104 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

several hours after it has been promised. It 
is not of record just how much time and 
money have been wasted by the mechanical 
department through not having the car when 
expected. 

If our administration is unusually smooth 
we may be able to load our scrap wheels on 
this same car. Usually, however, we wait 
until the car has been hauled down the line 
before some office away off somewhere gives 
disposition for the wornout material. Or, 
having unloaded all the wheels, we wait until 
next week before we order in another car, 
and go through the same performance to 
ship a couple of pairs to some junction point 
on the same division. I will not bore you 
with the expensive details of getting a car 
of ties loaded and distributed, of how much 
time the sectionmen are worked to poor ad- 
vantage because the car or material failed 
to show up when expected. 

We, mounted on wheels, with transporta- 
tion as our chief asset, let our own business 
get it where the chicken felt the axe, where 
the sharp flange caught the bum. It used 
to be more comfortable in the old days. We 
could have the sectionmen do so many jobs 

105 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

without its seeming to cost anything. The 
fact that we have learned better makes me 
rash enough to believe that we may yet pro- 
gress beyond thinking that some of our own 
transportation costs little or nothing because 
we do it with the local freight or a switch 
engine. We haul a car clear over the divi- 
sion to pick up a few pounds of scrap paper ; 
provided, of course, the agents have not con- 
fused the day with that for loading dairy line 
shipments. The weakness in handling com- 
pany material naturally leads to a distrust by 
other departments and a desire by each to 
control the distribution of its own supplies. 
Did you ever think in what a haphazard, 
hit or miss manner we handle our traveling 
workers? The scale inspector is a very neces- 
sary individual because freight revenue is a 
function of weight. He is so valuable to us 
that, although the test car is a nuisance in 
trains and yards, we haul him hundreds of 
miles to do a few minutes' or a few hours' 
work. If he should try to do any other com- 
pany business; if he should repair furniture, 
solicit traffic, inspect ties or examine inter- 
locking plants, he would infringe on the pre- 
rogatives of other men who earn salaries by 
106 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

riding much and working little. Yes, I know 
we must have departments. Our great task 
is to work them to the best advantage; to 
let them overlap a little when business is dull, 
or where local conditions permit. We should 
switch our departments together so that we 
can cut in the air on enough to hold the train 
without going after expenses with a club. 

The employe who does not receive supplies 
regularly, whose requisitions for stationery 
are arbitrarily cut, will try to get enough 
ahead to keep himself from running out. 
When you take an inventory you must fig- 
ure on removing the temptation for every- 
one to hold back full returns for fear of not 
rendering good service in the future. With 
a lot of money tied up in supplies at central 
or division storehouses our service often suf- 
fers, even accidents occur for want of a lan- 
tern globe, or a few gallons of oil. The aver- 
age local freight crew has no more compunc- 
tions in replenishing the caboose from a can 
of oil consigned to a country agent than did 
the slave in taking chickens. It all belongs 
to the company. Massa's chicken, massa's 
niggah. Some roads are now distributing oil 
to sections and to small stations from a box 
107 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

car fitted with inside tanks and self-register- 
ing pumps, a very economical arrangement. 
This car runs on the local freight at fixed 
times. The next step has been to put with 
it supply cars, handled by the oil man, who 
issues supplies and tools to agents, section 
foremen and pumpers. A stationery car 
comes next in the outfit. This progressive 
development is hampered in most cases by 
adherence to the time-honored requisition. 
It does not promote a good company spirit 
in an agent to haul by him a car filled with 
supplies and deny him a much-needed broom, 
a comfort-giving pane of glass, simply be- 
cause a requisition has not passed through 
the prescribed number of chief clerks' office 
baskets. Issues are for the good of the serv- 
ice, not for charity. The best way is to re- 
quire a division official to accompany the 
cars on his division, hold him responsible, 
and make his check good on our traveling 
bank. Let the employe sign on a line in a 
book for articles received, just as an agent 
receipts to an express messenger, and let 
the official countersign once for all the em- 
ployes on a page. Then you have the econ- 
omy and benefits of centralization without 
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Letters From A Railway Official. 

the demoralizing interference with local ad- 
ministration. 

The supply cars are only a beginning. The 
evolution must be a supply and inspection 
train run exclusively for company business, 
and to do every practicable kind of com- 
pany business. It should supply every de- 
partment and pick up the surplus and scrap 
in each. It should run over as many divi- 
sions as feasible, giving it time to return and 
restock so as to cover its territory at pre- 
scribed intervals, say every thirty or sixty 
days. This train should be manned by monthly 
company men, preferably of the semi-official 
class. The position of fireman should be 
part of the course of a special apprentice. If 
no special apprentice is available for engine- 
man, use the man in mind for the next va- 
cancy as road foreman. Let the scale in- 
spector be the flagman. For conductor have 
a coming trainmaster, not afraid to pull off 
his coat to help adjust a scale or to unload a 
'keg of track spikes. Have an ambitious brake- 
man for train clerk, whose records would 
replace requisitions and waybilling. For 
pilot use the superintendent, the trainmaster, 
the chief dispatcher, the master mechanic, 
109 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

the road foreman, the division engineer, or 
the supervisor. Have as many as possible of 
those last named accompany the train and 
give the division a rigid inspection. Pretty 
soon you would find the general superin- 
tendent frequently hitching his car to this 
train. Put the contents of the train in charge 
of a high-class traveling storekeeper. On the 
ground the employe would indicate his re- 
quirements, the division official would recom- 
mend, and the traveling storekeeper, closely 
in touch with the management and its pol- 
icies, would take final action. Whatever hap- 
pened to be done, it would be right up to date, 
and in accordance with existing needs. Arriv- 
ing at a roundhouse, the train itself would 
spot a car of wheels and a car of oil, taking 
care to reload scrap wheels and empty oil bar- 
rels. In general do not issue a new article un- 
less an unserviceable one is turned in. The 
recollections of those present will make fresher 
the record of expendable articles issued on a 
previous trip. Long range requisitions, ap- 
proved by distant authority, may result in 
false economy, in a lack of clearly defined re- 
sponsibility. The essence of good adminis- 
tration consists in dealing with men and 
no 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

things, in giving them greater value than 
their paper symbols. If love for requisitions 
should still linger in the official breast, the 
proprieties of such chaste affection could be 
preserved by going through all the forms 
until their absurdity is fully demonstrated. 

The supply train should have a car fitted 
up as a workshop in which a handy man 
could repair station trucks, office chairs, lan- 
terns, switch lamps, etc., etc., and save ship- 
ping many miles for a new part. Many tools 
and utensils would last longer if, in some 
such way, they could receive the stitch in 
time that saves nine. Prompt repair and in- 
terchange among various points should di- 
minish investment in reserve supply. An ar- 
ticle should not have to be returned to the 
place where previously used. Under present 
methods the return journey may put it in 
worse shape than when first sent in. When 
repaired it should be issued wherever it will 
do the most good. 

Another car in the supply train should be a 
laboratory in charge of the superintendent of 
tests or his representative, whose office would 
thus get more closely in touch with division 
officials and with service conditions. The 
in 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

scrap car, with its broken side rods, its worn- 
out shovels, its twisted drills, might mean a 
whole lot in connection with arbitrary theo- 
retical tests. 

With the train, on stated trips, should be 
the employment bureau. Pick up candidates, 
haul them over the division. Talk with them, 
note their adaptability in strange surround- 
ings, see of how promising a stretch is the 
rubber in their necks. Give them transpor- 
tation back home and, if desired, tell them 
to report again next trip for further exam- 
ination. 

When your supply train has to tie up 
away from a night roundhouse, let the crew 
take short turns as watchmen. Incidentally 
the train might serve as an object lesson as 
to the endurance and capacity of men, the 
length of runs, and the care of an engine. 
If your labor contracts do not permit you 
to man your own train, do the necessary 
toward an amendment of such unwise sched- 
ules. 

The more you think of the increased effi- 
ciency of the service, of the ultimate econ- 
omy, of the smoother administration, the 
more you will cuddle up to the notion of a 

112 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

company train. Experience will show the 
wisdom or unwisdom of numerous details 
that will suggest themselves. I have given 
you only an outline with a few samples of 
methods to be pursued. I want you to think 
out the rest for yourself. It is theory to-day, 
but the theory of to-day is the forerunner of 
practice a few years hence. 

Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 



113 



LETTER XVII. 

WHAT THE BIG ENGINE HAS COST. 

July io, 1904. 
My Dear Boy:-— The progressive president 
of a rustling railroad has recently gone on 
record as regretting the too rapid introduc- 
tion of big engines. To which from many an 
ancient office, from many a greasy round- 
house comes a loud amen. The fad for big 
engines, the slavery to the ton mile, the rack 
of the comparative statement, have cost the 
granger, roads a pile of good coin. Procrus- 
tes, the highwayman of the ancients, fitted all 
his victims to stone beds, doubtless charging 
to other expenses the stretching of an arm 
or the cutting off of a foot. Nowadays we 
get our brains warped and our legs pulled 
just the same. The methods are more subtle, 
the operations more graceful. Our equanim- 
ity stands for almost any old thing, provided 
it is done in the name of progress, or is called 
a process of analysis. Able men devote their 
lives to the solution of problems of practical 
114 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

railroad operation, to making maximum net 
earnings for their employers, only to be dis- 
counted by the financial writers. Fools rush 
in where angels fear to tread. The same 
writers who, to hear them tell it, can save 
financial panics by sound advice to the coun- 
try bankers, who can instruct our Uncle Sam- 
uel how to handle his navy, who can hurry 
Russian troops to Manchuria, can tell us just 
how to run our railroad, just how many tons 
we should pull per train. Invention is the 
handmaiden of progress. Inventors are usu- 
ally laymen or outsiders. Inventors and arch- 
itects have to be held in check to prevent de- 
velopment from becoming abnormal or one- 
sided. The man who invented the air brake 
was not asked to come in and take charge of 
all transportation. The men who design big 
engines should not be allowed to forget con- 
ditions of track, territory and traffic. 

Railroads are run to make money. A mo- 
tion to manage them like golf links is never 
in order. The track is built for running 
trains. To the man with too much ton mile 
on the brain the running of a train, the very 
object of the road's existence, becomes a 
bugaboo. He will sacrifice business, incur 

us 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

risks of other losses, rather than run a train. 
In some cases this is all right, in others it is 
all wrong. There is a happy medium which 
all of us should be allowed to work out for 
ourselves, to suit our own conditions. The 
trouble is that we are denied a sliding scale. 
All roads look alike to the critic, the reviewer 
and the broker. 

Roads of dense traffic with much low-class 
freight, such as coal, coke, ore, pig iron, etc., 
to move, found it more economical to have 
large engines and heavy trains. The nature of 
the business demands a considerable supply 
always on hand. This permits waiting for full 
tonnage for every train. A few cars, more 
or less, at one end or the other of the line 
make no great difference to the shipper. 
These roads usually have more than one 
track and an old solid roadbed. This good 
thing of economical transportation was 
pushed along to us of the prairies. Here 
traffic is relatively thin, the track with dirt 
ballast is less solid, hauls are many times 
longer, and single track is the rule. More- 
over, we frequently have merchandise, imple- 
ments, machinery and other high-class freight 
in one direction, and such perishable stuff as 
116 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

live stock and dressed meats in the other. A 
dozen years ago we had developed a combi- 
nation freight and passenger engine, usually 
a ten-wheeler with fairly high drivers, which 
handled such business promptly and profit- 
ably. We could take out a Raymond excur- 
sion or a theatrical special one way, and com- 
ing back make a fly run with belated stock 
for a distant market. We may yet do the 
same with the compound battleship, but it 
will first require alterations and a big expen- 
diture on track. When stock shows up you 
must get it moving. You cannot hold it to 
club trains, as in the case of coal and pig iron. 
You miss the market and there is a big claim 
to pay, to which the financial gentleman in 
New York does not give sufficient weight 
when he makes his wonderful analysis of our 
figures. It does not show up in grate sur- 
face, tractive *power, or weight on the drivers. 
It is not complimentary to our wisdom that 
stock shippers have been compelled to in- 
voke State aid to force us to run stock trains 
regardless of full tonnage, to do what our 
own best interests demanded. We should 
avoid the necessity for even a just regula- 

U7 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

tion of our affairs. It opens the door to much 
that is unjust and undesirable. 

The big engine has made us straighten 
curves, reduce grades, relay rail, renew 
bridges, buy land, increase terminals, extend 
passing tracks, abandon light equipment and 
increase wages. Its presence on single-track 
roads has retarded traffic and has increased 
expenses. It has torn up our track and in- 
creased the number of wrecks. Its long hours 
and trying work have been an element of de- 
moralization among our men. The efficiency 
of our crews is limited to the endurance of 
the fireman. This last condition must be 
remedied by an automatic stoker — the most 
crying need of the present. Supply usually 
keeps pretty close to demand and the auto- 
matic stoker should not be very long in 
coming. 

Yes, directly and indirectly, the big en- 
gine has cost us a lot of dough. It is not 
an unmixed evil. It has its good points, to 
be sure. Some of the new conditions it has 
forced would have come in time anyway. Its 
advantages would be greater, its operation 
cheaper, if its coming could have been broken 
to us more gently. It is now a condition, 
118 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

not a theory, and we must do our best with 
it, regardless of our personal predilections. 
Whether or not it has come to stay, is an open 
question. It probably has, but modified for 
higher speed, when all conditions permit. 
We are not yet wise enough to know just 
what it is costing us. Not even our own 
statisticians have had time to digest fully the 
figures of increased equipment due to slower 
movement ; of increased cost of maintenance, 
both of track and equipment ; of unparalleled 
increase in freight claims; of higher wages; 
of strengthened power of the labor organi- 
zations; of altered trade conditions due 
to dissatisfaction with transportation; of 
changed location of industrial plants; of the 
effect of reduced speed on water competi- 
tion; of the numerous conditions that go to 
make a railroad so complex. In the language 
of the good old funeral hymn, some time 
we'll understand. 

We must make up our minds to prompter 
movement of freight, which may mean in- 
creased speed. The people demand it and 
public opinion is king. Here again the ship- 
per steps in to help us out, for promptness 
simplifies our terminal problems. The art of 

"9 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

war has been defined as getting the mostest 
men there the fustest. The art of railroading 
comes to mean moving the mostest trains 
the soonest. 

Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 



120 



LETTER XVIII. 

BE A SUPERINTENDENT — NOT A NURSE. 

July 17, 1904. 
My Dear Boy : — I am so sure that you will 
be a general manager some day that I have 
been writing you a good deal of advice as to 
matters that are above the control of a di- 
vision superintendent. As a rule, however, 
a man will fill any position better if he has 
a good conception of the work that is be- 
yond his own sphere. Some people do not 
like to hire an ex-official for work subordinate 
to positions that he may previously have 
held. They fear that the old superintendent 
who gets aboard as yardmaster or dispatcher 
will be a nuisance, that he will be all the time 
scheming for promotion, that he may try to 
dictate to his superiors, that he will have too 
much dignity to climb a side ladder, that he 
will be only temporary, that they will soon 
be put to the trouble of breaking in another 
man. All of which is narrow and shows in 
the aforesaid objectors a lack of confidence 

121 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

in themselves and in their own organization. 
It all depends on the man himself. If he is 
the right stuff he will take a broader view for 
having been an official. He will appreciate 
the difficulties of his superiors. His desire 
to make good should induce him to put forth 
maximum effort. He may be able to get his 
men out of ruts of many years' standing. It 
is so seldom that we get fresh blood we 
should be thankful that circumstances permit 
us to get a three-hundred-dollar man to work 
for one hundred. He may be only temporary 
for that position, but if he makes us money 
we should be willing to be incommoded later 
on. It is a selfish fear, this feeling that by and 
by our royal selves may suffer the personal 
inconvenience of having to look after a cer- 
tain part of our machine that we thought was 
running itself. Vain hope, this looking for 
any kind of perpetual motion. We are paid 
official salaries to be big enough to tower 
over such lazy feelings, over our own per- 
sonal disinclination to exertion. Let me re- 
peat, once more, that for every position you 
should have an understudy. Then if anybody 
drops out through promotion or otherwise 
your task is a simple one. 
122 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

A fact that none of us should overlook is 
that we all have superiors. The president re- 
ports to the directors, and the latter to the 
stockholders. The stockholder, big or lit- 
tle, is his or her majesty, the citizen. Our 
superiors must know what we are doing. 
They will not butt in and give us so many 
directions if we just keep them advised of 
our progress. Your general superintendent 
is an able man, but neither you nor he is a 
mental telegrapher. After you get the sur- 
geons called, the wreck train started, the 
general superintendent should be the next 
man to have the wire. Tell him briefly what 
has happened, what you have done, are do- 
ing and expect to do. If conditions are such 
that it is wise for you to go to the wreck or 
the washout yourself, wire him that you are 
on the ground. Don't think this is enough, 
but every half hour or so tell him how you 
are getting along. He will feel better and 
the officials above him will feel better. You 
will feel better because, if they are wise, they 
will let you alone and not bother you with 
instructions. Above all things do not try 
to pass responsibility up higher by asking 
what to do. Tell the general superintendent 
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Letters From A Railway Official. 

what trains you will detour, what equipment 
you will need from other divisions for stub 
runs, what you have requested your neigh- 
bors to do. War has been declared, the writs 
of the courts have ceased to run. You are 
the general in the field and it is all up to you. 
From the moment that you are wideawake 
enough to answer the telephone at the head 
of your bed, your brain should be earning 
your company many dollars a minute. As 
you slip into your clothes, think connectedly 
where all available men and material are to 
be had. As you rush over to the office, fig- 
ure what the situation needs to protect the 
morning suburban trains. When you see the 
train sheet, tell the dispatcher what trains 
should be kept on time as long as possible, 
what trains should be tied up to prevent a 
blockade. Don't sit down and take the key, 
or act as call boy or for one second forget 
that you are the superintendent, that the 
whole push looks to you. The cooler your 
manner, the less hesitating your instructions, 
the greater the confidence of your men in 
you and in themselves, the better their work. 
Arriving at the scene of trouble, size up 
the situation, reassure the panic-stricken pas- 

124 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

sengers, organize everybody present, give po- 
litely all the information you have, how many 
hours passengers will be delayed, what train 
will come to take them forward, when their 
baggage can be expected. Be cool but sym- 
pathetic; alert, but polite. In a few minutes 
your presence for good will be felt. Tell the 
wreckmaster what to do first, but do not try 
to handle his men. Resist the temptation to 
use an axe or shovel yourself. Do not shrink 
from the sight of blood. Lead the relief par- 
ties, but do not try to be surgeon or nurse. 
Let the others do the lifting of the killed or 
injured. You do your work with your brains 
and with your voice. Be a superintendent. 
Care first for the injured and the dead. Then 
look to the comfort of the other passengers. 
Next in importance comes the mails, then the 
express and the baggage. Do not give any 
grand stand orders to burn cars or roll heavy 
equipment down the bank. Think twice be- 
fore you destroy more property. The line 
must be opened, but conditions may be such 
that an extra hour or two will not complicate 
the situation, and will save the company 
thousands of dollars. Men often earn big 
salaries by the things they avoid doing. 

125 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

When the work has been organized, circu- 
late among the gangs, give each foreman a 
word of praise, tell them all that you have 
ordered coffee and sandwiches, that the com- 
pany also gives its men square meals at 
wrecks. Arrange to feed your transferred 
passengers earlier rather than later than 
usual. Do not hesitate to feed badly delayed 
passengers at the company's expense. When 
everything is running smoothly keep your 
mouth shut and your ears open. As the 
country people come flocking in to see the 
wreck, as the roadmaster yells his orders, 
you will hear some sweetheart ask her swain 
if that is the superintendent who has such a 
big voice. When he shakes his head and the 
wreckmaster roars to take a fresh hitch, she 
guesses again, only to be told that the quiet 
man over there with apparently the least to 
say is the boss of all. Soon many of the by- 
standers are pointing admiringly at you as 
the master of the situation. When it is all 
over, when, hours or days later, you lie down 
for a well-earned rest, you will feel that you 
are a railroad man, that you are holding 
down a job for which no old woman need 
apply. There is some self-satisfaction in this 
126 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

world which outruns the pay car, which can- 
not be measured in dollars and cents. 

What I am telling you holds good for a 
trainmaster, a yardmaster or whoever hap- 
pens to be the senior representative present. 
Sometimes it is better to send out the train- 
master and stay in yourself to handle an al- 
ready congested situation. Sometimes the 
trainmaster is at the wrong end of the line 
and you must go yourself. Common sense 
is a pretty safe guide as to one's course of 
action. The principle to be remembered is 
to avoid interference with the man on the 
ground. If it is a minor derailment which 
the conductor is handling, do not rattle him 
with messages, with requests for reports. 
When you examine your conductors on rules, 
include questions and explanations which 
outline action expected in emergencies. For- 
bid your dispatcher sending a stereotyped 
message to get written statements of all wit- 
nesses every time a personal injury occurs. 
Have your conductors, your agents and your 
section foremen so drilled that they will keep 
the office informed and will depend on them- 
selves, not on the dispatchers, for such things. 
Your rules, your organization, the instruc- 
127 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

tions on your blanks will amount to little if 
they are continually discounted by special 
messages. You had better lose a set of re- 
ports than tear your organization to pieces. 
When somebody falls down, discipline him 
in such a way that the others will keep in line. 
It takes patience and persistence, forbear- 
ance and firmness to drill men to a high state 
of discipline. Disobedience and indifference 
can sometimes be traced to unwise orders. 
The impossible or the unreasonable is ex- 
pected. There are too many bulletins and 
too many instructions. Do not think a thing 
is done, an abuse corrected, a condition rem- 
edied simply because you have given an or- 
der to produce the desired effect. It is up 
to you to follow the matter to a finish. You 
must know by observation, by inspection, by 
the reports of your staff, that your order is 
being obeyed. The way to enforce discipline 
is not to keep repeating the order. Except 
in rare cases an order should not be re- 
peated or a bulletin reissued. Weak men try 
to strengthen their discipline by extravagant 
language in their instructions. Do not say 
that no excuse will be taken for failure to 
turn in these reports or to comply with these 
128 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

instructions. You may be made to appear 
ridiculous, even mendacious, by a cloudburst, 
by a holdup, by an act of Godj or the public 
enemy, as the old law phrase runs. Vitality 
in expression is a good thing. It is useless 
without vigor in enforcement. The latter 
does not depend upon the kind of breakfast 
food you order in the dining car, but upon the 
ginger in your administration. 

Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 



129 



LETTER XIX. 

THE RACK OF THE COMPARATIVE STATEMENT. 

July 24, 1904. 
My Dear Boy: — You ask what I mean by 
the rack of the comparative statement. I 
mean that, figuratively speaking, we are all 
pretty securely fastened to the corresponding- 
month of last year. What was originally 
intended as a tavernkeeper's tab, as a rough 
check on operation, has become a balanced 
ledger, a rigid standard of efficiency. Time, 
even a short period, brings a sacredness to 
all things. If we make a so-called better 
showing on paper than a twelvemonth pre- 
vious, we shake hands with ourselves and for- 
get how rotten we were considered just one 
short year ago. The ball team that wins the 
championship and takes the big gate receipts 
is the one whose members play for the side 
rather than for high individual averages. 
The tendency is for our owners to expect us 
to make base hits rather than send in runs 
which win games. 

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Letters From A Railway Official. 

If in April and May we have a lot of ties on 
hand, we may not be allowed to put them in 
the track because they will be charged out be- 
fore June 30, and make too heavy a showing 
of expenditure for the fiscal year. So, with 
labor comparatively plentiful and the weather 
comfortable, we wait until the new fiscal year 
comes in, until the sun shines hottest on the 
track. Then, with farmers paying harvest 
wages we have to offer more money. If we 
get the extra men the heat lessens their effi- 
ciency. It is true we have probably had to 
pay the producer for the ties, but if we fail 
to charge them to the final account, we have 
a childlike confidence that they have not yet 
cost us anything. The little matters of fail- 
ure to utilize the full life of the tie, of inter- 
est on the money invested, we dismiss with 
the thought that trifling losses must be ex- 
pected in the conduct of large affairs. 

Maintenance of equipment as well as main- 
tenance of way suffers from too much com- 
parative statement. Some new official pulls 
our power to pieces to show us how they 
used to build up train-mile records on the Far 
Eastern. The crowded rip tracks reflect the 
tractive power of the big engines. Bad or- 

131 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

ders, the bane of a yardmaster's life, the teas- 
ers of the traffic man's tracers, block our 
terminals. Our shopmen and our car repair- 
ers, despairing of full time, move away. Yet 
withal we are serene, for are not we operating 
just as cheaply as they did at this time last 
year? 

When I am in doubt, when I become mixed 
with the complexities of our profession, I go 
back to my boyhood on the farm. From 
that gateway as a basing point I can think 
out a rate sheet with fewer differentials. The 
same common sense housekeeping which my 
mother practiced will fit any railroad, how- 
ever diversified its territory. The same well- 
balanced management which enabled my 
father to pay off the mortgage and extend 
his acres is suited to any railroad, however 
complicated its financial obligations. The 
bigger the proposition, the greater the need 
for sticking to homely basic principles. We 
learned on the farm to expect about so much 
rainfall every year. Whether the heaviest 
would come in one month or in another, the 
good Lord never found time to tell us. We 
did the things that came to hand, sometimes 
similarly, sometimes differently, from the cor- 
132 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

responding month of the previous year. If 
our crops were short we did not starve our 
work horses. We sometimes found it paid, 
even with a poor crop in sight, to go to the 
bank and borrow rather than neglect the 
ditching in a wet field. If we made some sur- 
plus money we did not blow it all in for tools 
and improvements. We knew that the in- 
evitable lean years preclude throwing the fat 
in the fire. If we ran behind some year, we 
did some retrenching, to be sure, but we did 
not lose our nerve, did not lose our faith in 
the future. 

Some kinds of fertilizers on the farm are 
said to make rich fathers and poor sons. The 
way some railroads have been run for a record 
you would imagine that race suicide had 
reached a point where no further generations 
were expected. One of the gravest of our 
mistakes has been the application of the com- 
parative statement, regardless of its effect 
upon our men. The farmer finds it wise 
and economical to arrange work for several 
monthly men in order to minimize the num- 
ber of day hands for his rush seasons. In the 
winter he may lay them off, but this is for 
a period sufficiently long and sufficiently defi- 

i33 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

nite to enable the farm hand to become some- 
thing else, say a wood chopper or a lumber- 
man. Can we expect our car repairers, our 
sectionmen, to be loyal and faithful if we lay 
them off with necessary work in sight, sim- 
ply to make our books look better? They 
know that later on we shall, at the last min- 
ute, at the scratch of an indefinite some- 
body's pen, put on a big force and with a 
hurrah, boys, rush it through. Is this fair? 
Is it not better to keep twenty men steadily 
employed than to have forty on half time? 
The unquestioned deterioration in the quality 
of our labor, in the morale of our forces, can- 
not all be laid on the union's doorstep. There 
is a responsibility here which we cannot 
shirk. 

Cutting down expenses has been done in 
an unintelligent, cold-blooded sort of a way. 
We go home at night feeling good at having 
cut down our payrolls. We should be feel- 
ing sorry at the necessity for taking from 
men the wherewithal to pay the unceasing 
rent and grocery bills. Our methods give 
some room for the populists' plea to put the 
man above the dollar. No, I do not expect 
ever to see an entire correction of these con- 

i34 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

ditions. In the play of economic forces the 
weak have to suffer. I believe, though, that 
through minimizing such suffering we can 
improve the service and earn bigger divi- 
dends for our stockholders. Each of us can 
do a little; all of us together can do a great 
deal toward making the problems easier. As 
the French say, noblesse oblige — rank im- 
poses obligation — every time. It is up to us, 
the educated, powerful class, to take the lead 
and to do the most. We cannot expect the 
poor, unlettered man to work out his own sal- 
vation unaided. We cannot turn him loose to 
face an unequal struggle. If he fails, if he has 
too much time for brooding, society at large 
has an anarchist and we are the losers. Do 
not understand me as advocating the employ- 
ment or retention of unnecessary men. What 
I am kicking for is a better balanced system. 
When we lay off our extra sectionman in the 
fall, do we give him a pass and ask him to 
come to town and work when we put on 
more unskilled winter labor in the shops and 
roundhouses? No, he is in a different depart- 
ment. An official or a foreman might be put 
to the inconvenience of waiting a few days, 
of breaking in a new man. Next spring there 

i35 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

might have to be a readjustment when the 
work trains go on. Some big, strong rail- 
road men are coming to the front who will 
improve these conditions by working from 
a broader viewpoint. We need more brainy 
men with nerve enough to stand up and in- 
sist upon a consideration of the welfare of 
our properties ten, twenty or fifty years hence. 
Because we need them they will be developed. 

Now do not hand me the old song and 
dance about business being cold-blooded and 
devoid of sentiment. We spend money di- 
rectly and indirectly for advertising with a 
view to fostering public sentiment in favor 
of our line. Business comes from an increase 
in population, from development of re- 
sources, from the growing sentiments of the 
human race. Life owes its origin to love, 
which originates in sentiment. The family, 
directly traceable to sentiment, is the unit of 
civilization. The way to have our heads rule 
our hearts is not to forget that we have 
hearts. 

Business is so attractive because it is chock 
full of sentiment which can be made an asset. 
Affectionately, your own 

D. A. De 

136 



LETTER XX. 

HANDLING THE PAY ROLL. 

July 31, 1904. 
My Dear Boy: — I have your letter about 
the supply train. Please do not fail to con- 
sider that it is an inspection and administra- 
tive train as well as a traveling storehouse. 
The term company train perhaps comes the 
nearest to a comprehensive designation. As 
a tentative proposition, to be modified by ex- 
perience, I think I would distribute one-half 
of the expense of the train to supply, the 
other half to inspection and consider both 
halves as money well spent. With the enor- 
mous growth of business, with the increas- 
ing expansion of systems, we have had to 
leave more and more to departments. The 
result is that each department becomes more 
and more forgetful of the others. It isn't 
enough to have the heads at the general of- 
fices take lunch together. We must begin 
farther down in our administration to keep 
our departments in touch. Representatives 

137 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

of the traffic department should accompany 
the train and distribute their own advertis- 
ing matter. Perhaps the best feature of all 
would be the improved feeling among the 
country agents due to more intimate ac- 
quaintance with the operating and traffic offi- 
cials with whom they are doing business. 
We can afford to compete with the organ- 
izers of the telegraphers and clerks for this 
spirit. It will interest you to know that at 
least two large systems are figuring on a 
company train. When it comes, as come it 
will, we shall all wonder, as in the case of 
the telephone, how we ever got along with- 
out it. 

You ask if the pay car should be included 
in the outfit. Yes, if local conditions permit. 
Before going into this very far, however, let 
us consider our system of paying only once 
a month. Has it sufficient merit to stand the 
test of time? It breaks down in some cases 
when we wish additional cheap labor. Many 
of us have turned over to contractors the un- 
loading of company coal at fuel stations. The 
avowed reason for so doing is that the shov- 
elers being often recruited from the hobo or 
the squalid class, we cannot hope to handle 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

them as well as a contractor who pays daily 
or weekly. Right down the track a little way 
our agent is remitting company money which 
is not earning any interest. Another reason 
given is that our officials are too far away to 
give the coal wharves proper supervision. As 
a matter of fact the official is on hand about 
as frequently as the contractor. This is a 
sad commentary on the versatility and elas- 
ticity of our organization. Before throwing 
money to the contractors why not give our 
section foreman or our agent a bonus for 
supervising the coal heavers? Let our men 
be a little interchangeable. If a man be- 
comes worn out from too much sun on the 
track, let the breeze blow through his whis- 
kers in the coal shed for a few weeks. No, 
I do not think the track would suffer if the 
section foreman had to put the fear of the 
Lord in another gang of men. The old-time 
section foreman had ingenuity and original- 
ity enough to do many things. His proto- 
type of to-day may be dwarfed by over-spe- 
cialization. When we treat our men less like 
machines we can subdivide gangs and still 
get results. 

Nearly every winter a bill is introduced 

139 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

in some legislature requiring corporations 
to pay their men at least twice a month. 
Railroads at once get busy and manage to be 
exempted from the provisions of these meas- 
ures. Such resistance is based on a variety 
of arguments, the vastness of territory cov- 
ered, the large number of men employed, the 
necessity for careful auditing, etc. How long 
we can hold out against the spirit of the age 
is a question. Why not keep ahead of the 
game and lead public opinion? At such times 
we become very solicitous of the thriftiness 
of our men. We claim that we are their 
benefactors; that by paying them so much 
money at one time we are helping them to 
save. As a matter of fact people who have 
studied such questions tell us that when pay- 
ments are frequent less stuff is bought on 
credit and fewer bills are run. Savings banks 
find that, under certain conditions, men who 
are paid daily or weekly will put by more 
money than those who have a monthly pay 
day. It is an economic question, dependent 
more upon sociological conditions than upon 
railroad policy. 

It is usually pretty good business sense to 
take advantage of trade discounts. Do you 
140 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

not think we could make better bargains with 
our men if we did not wait to pay them until 
we are six weeks in arrears? We pay them for 
only one month and are always in their debt. 
Every once in a while we lose a good man 
from the service because he is hard pressed 
and can raise money only by taking his time 
check. 

The monthly payroll was adopted before 
bonding and surety companies revolutionized 
business methods. The theory is that the 
roll must be approved and audited before 
payment in order to insure accuracy and pre- 
vent fraud. Did you ever hear of a payroll 
being disapproved as such? No matter how 
unwise their employment, how injudicious 
the time put in, the men must be paid. We 
are under moral and legal obligations to pay 
for service performed. Did you ever hear of 
a padded payroll being caught in the audit- 
or's office? The man who stuffs the roll al- 
ters the data against which the auditor 
checks. The few arithmetical errors discov- 
ered do not justify the time consumed. 
Again, why should you send your general 
superintendent a payroll of names any more 
than you should send him copies of your 

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Letters From A Railway Official. 

train sheets? What difference should it 
make to him just how much each particular 
man worked? He should have a summary 
of results, totals, maxima, minima, averages, 
etc., just as the morning report gives him a 
summary of the train sheet. If he wants 
more detailed information, let him come to 
your office and examine the time books, just 
as he should occasionally go over your train 
sheets. He is furnished a car to travel for 
just such purposes. 

Assuming the desirability for more fre- 
quent payments, the day, the trip, the piece, 
would seem the best unit. Railroads have 
comparatively few credit lists. The ability 
to force patrons to pay cash is a business 
asset, and should give us the benefits of a 
cash basis. Our present system of payments 
is slow and cumbrous. In our desire to guard 
every avenue to fraud we have gone too far 
and retarded administration. The bonding 
company gives us a check which should en- 
able us, under a proper system of inspection, 
to have the timekeeper practically the pay- 
master. I confess that I have not yet been 
able to work out all the details to my own 
satisfaction. I have gone far enough, how- 
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Letters From A Railway Official. 

ever, to be convinced that there are men in 
our business bright enough to solve the prob- 
lem. When given proper attention it will be 
found that for the same or less expense we 
can pay daily, improve the service and ren- 
der a better account of our stewardship to 
the stockholders. 

An agent remits daily. Why not let him 
turn in as cash a receipt or a deduction to 
cover his own pay? If he can do this, it is 
an easy step to accept as cash the time slips 
of his force, of the operators and sectionmen 
at his station. The time slips of shopmen, 
roundhousemen, yardmen, trainmen, engine- 
men, etc., when countersigned by the proper 
chief clerk, should become cash at a certain 
designated agency or local bank. It might 
be found practicable to use a form of time 
slip similar to a postal note or a street car 
transfer which could be punched and then 
authenticated with a stamp. An advantage 
of this would be that these original data 
would be available for tabulation in electrical 
integrating machines in the auditor's office. 
The plan followed in compiling statistics 
would be similar to that in use for many 
years in the census office in Washington. 

H3 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

Such a system of payment presupposes 
fewer checking clerks but more traveling 
auditors and inspectors. It does things first 
and talks about them afterward. It is predi- 
cated upon the belief that checks and bal- 
ances must begin to work nearer the founda- 
tion, that true centralization of results de- 
mands a full measure of local autonomy. 
Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 



144 



LETTER XXL 

MILITARY ORGANIZATION. 

August 7, 1904. 

My Dear Boy : — While in Washington last 
week I dropped in to see some old cronies at 
the War Department. The iconoclasts have 
been at work there, too, with gratifying re- 
sults. The military secretary's office has 
superseded the former adjutant-general's de- 
partment. Under the new dispensation every 
letter must receive definite action, not a mere 
acknowledgment, the very day of its receipt ; 
every telegram must be answered within two 
hours. An emergency request came in for 
some equipment for a militia encampment. 
In three hours the Philadelphia clothing de- 
pot acknowledged the order, reported loading 
and shipment, and advised that bill of lading 
had been mailed. This means better supply, 
less suffering, more effective movements 
when real war comes. It means a saving in 
blood and treasure. 

We of the railroads are inclined to scoff 

145 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

at the slowness of government methods. Are 
we doing as well as the rejuvenated War De- 
partment? Of course, when there is a wreck, 
a washout, a fire, we do some great stunts. 
Day in and day out we are sadly lacking in 
promptness , with our telegrams and our let- 
ters. The pulse of business is so quick that 
these delays cost us money. The remedy is 
simple. Get the departments in line. A dip- 
lomatic censor with rank enough, say, that of 
assistant to the president, should be able to 
show even the highest officials where they 
are falling down, where they are duplicating 
work, where their telegrams have no business 
on the company's wires, where their letters 
are too lengthy, where their offices are lame. 
The departments on a railroad correspond to 
the bureaux of the War Department. 

The Spanish war showed the weakness of 
the departmental system under modern con- 
ditions. It has been corrected by the creation 
by Congress of a general staff, with a chief 
of staff, usually a general officer detailed from 
the line, who, as next in rank to the Secretary 
of War, controls all departments, thus insur- 
ing unity of action. He has help enough to 
enable the general staff to give attention to 
146 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

details. The president of a railroad is often 
too busy and seldom has assistance enough 
to hold his departments in check. They do 
not always maintain a proper proportion to 
each other. If he appoints a committee to 
consider a question, the tendency is for such 
committee to leave the transportation part to 
its transportation man, the mechanical ques- 
tion to the mechanical member and the traffic 
problem to the traffic representative. The 
results of such work are likely to be narrow 
or one-sided. Each member should consider 
every phase of the matter and not minimize 
his own versatility. Remember that the lay- 
man may discover a radical inconsistency in 
professional practice. Give each man due 
weight in his specialty, but do not let him be 
absolute. A minority report from a commit- 
tee should always be welcome as affording 
more information for the parent body or the 
appointing power. A little careful considera- 
tion, a little lively debate on a committee re- 
port, may be a healthy check. 

While speaking of military organization, let 
me impress upon you that in the army the 
line always commands the staff. A staff offi- 
cer cannot command troops except by ex- 

147 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

press direction of the President. Enlisted 
men and junior officers must show a staff 
officer the respect due his rank, just as our 
conductor is respectful to the division freight 
agent, but when it comes to taking orders, 
that is another question. A lieutenant of the 
line, if he happens to be the senior present, 
may have under his command a surgeon with 
the rank of major, a commissary with the 
rank of captain, etc. Certain special work, 
such as the construction of buildings, of a 
telegraph line, of a road, may be put under 
a staff officer reporting directly to headquar- 
ters and exempted from the orders of the 
local commander of troops. We do the same 
when we put certain construction work under 
our engineers working independently of the 
superintendent. In an emergency all officers, 
men and material come under the control of 
the senior line officer present. With us the 
line is the transportation department, to 
whose senior representative, in time of trou- 
ble, usually the superintendent, every official 
and employe of whatever department should 
yield unquestioning obedience. 

They have another feature in army admin- 
istration which we would do well to emulate. 
148 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

On the theory perhaps that a cat may look 
at a king*, the lowest may address the highest. 
The official ear and mouthpiece of the War 
Department is the military secretary. He 
may be addressed by the lowest man in the 
service, provided, that under the address is 
the important phrase in parenthesis, "through 
the proper channels." Unless the communi- 
cation is grossly irrelevant or disrespectful it 
must be forwarded through the channels, 
each officer indorsing his opinion, pro or con. 
If it reaches an officer whose authority and 
views can give favorable action, it need not 
go higher. Otherwise, it must keep going. 
The reply comes back to the man through 
the same channels. All this is worth the 
trouble it costs, for. even if unfavorable action 
is taken, the man feels that he has been given 
consideration ; that he is not a mere machine ; 
that there may be good, honest reasons for 
turning him down. This strong effort to pre- 
serve individuality is the reason that the 
American people never have cause to lose 
confidence in the man behind the gun. Its 
short-sighted absence in railroad administra- 
tion is the prime cause of our loss of confi- 
dence in the spirit of our men. The inaugu- 
149 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

ration of such a feature might cause our agi- 
tators to be annoying and importunate for a 
time. The greater the consideration shown, 
the sooner would the agitators be laughed at 
and discouraged by their comrades. It would 
break up the fashion of ignoring the superin- 
tendent and running to the general manager 
with every petty little grievance. 

If your trainmaster sees fit to make a gen- 
eral recommendation, for example, about a 
train rule, provided he does so through your 
office, you should forward it, giving your own 
views. If you happen to disapprove, do not 
try to kill the proposition by holding the 
letter. Under the narrow practice of most 
roads the trainmaster would have no redress 
and would be considered disloyal if he 
attempted to reach the general superin- 
tendent. 

In the handling of railroad papers there 
are a number of short cuts. There are too 
many letters written just for the sake of hav- 
ing a carbon to complete a file. If you must 
have a carbon, require offices reporting to 
yours to make an extra copy on the type- 
writer of the original letter. Stamp both 
copies with the office dater, and just below 

iSQ 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

use a one-line rubber stamp ; for example, "To 
the General Superintendent," adding in pen, 
if necessary, such words as "recommended," 
"disapproved," etc. If no special action is 
taken, no signature is necessary, the office 
stamp being sufficient authentication. For- 
ward one copy, keep the other, and in routine 
correspondence your file is complete without 
the scratch of a pen or the click of a type- 
writer in your office. Certain classes of pa- 
pers referred to your subordinates, for ex- 
ample, special itineraries, claims, statistics, 
etc., can be kept track of by a number system 
in a small book, without using any carbon. 
Master the file system of your office. If some- 
one happens to drop in for information, do 
not be put to the mortification of explaining 
that your clerks do not come down Sunday 
morning, or that they are all playing ball on 
the company nine. Filing should be uniform 
on divisions and in departments, one general 
plan for the whole road. Some roads have 
as many varieties as a pickle factory. 

It was nice of your friend, the chief dis- 
patcher, to write so strong a letter indorsing 
the sacredness of signatures. He is right; 
most telegraphic instructions on a division 

i5i 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

should go out over the initials of the chief 
dispatcher. Years ago your old dad, with 
the title of trainmaster and the duties of an 
assistant superintendent, obtained smooth re- 
suits from the following bulletin : 

"Instructions from this office governing 
the movements of trains, engines and cars, 
and the temporary assignments of men, will 
be given over the initials of the chief dis- 
patcher. Messages concerning such routine 
matters will be addressed to the chief dis- 
patcher. The idea is to limit the use of the 
trainmaster's initials to cases handled per- 
sonally by him." 

The men caught right on. They saw that 
it was impossible for a man to be issuing all 
the instructions over the wire when he spent 
most of his time on the road. 

I have long thought that a train order 
should be as individual as a bank check and 
be signed by the dispatcher's own initials. I 
am beginning to believe that no signature is 
necessary; that the dispatcher's initials, given 
with the "complete," should be sufficient. 
Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 



152 



LETTER XXII. 

WRECKS AND BLOCK SIGNALS. 

August 14, 1904. 
My Dear Boy: — You ask what we are go- 
ing to do to prevent so many wrecks. My 
various admonitions to you have been in vain 
if I have failed to score some points looking 
to that end. We must get closer to our men, 
improve their discipline, which means also 
their spirit. We must have more official 
supervision. We must pay division officials 
better salaries. The minimum pay of a di- 
vision superintendent, regardless of the price 
of wheat, should be $300 per month and 
expenses, with such greater amount as the 
importance of the division demands. Train- 
masters cannot be expected to enforce disci- 
pline and set an example in neatness if paid 
less than some of their conductors and en- 
ginemen. Not a bad rough rule for fixing 
intermediate salaries is to split the difference 
between the highest man in one grade and the 
lowest in the next higher, and then add 

i53 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

enough to make convenient even money. Do 
not think you are saving money if you avoid 
raising the pay of your officials when you 
raise that of employes. 

Wrecks are a reflection of administration. 
Sometimes cause and effect are years apart, 
so distant, in fact, as to be almost unrecog- 
nizable. Adversity makes heroes and the 
more disorganized we find conditions the 
more comprehensive and earnest should be 
our efforts to seek the cure. Neither public 
opinion nor our own self-respect will stand 
for shifting too much of the blame to our 
predecessors. Whatever safety appliances we 
adopt we shall never be able to eliminate en- 
tirely the element of human judgment, we 
shall never get beyond trusting somebody. 
Therefore we must train our men to alertness. 
We must build up a loyalty that pervades 
every rank. Those roads have the fewest 
wrecks due to defective equipment which 
cater to the welfare of their men. Such roads 
do not expect a man to live on air. When 
repair work is slack they put their men to 
building cars and engines, taking advantage 
of the low price of material. If we have to 
operate so closely that we cannot make such 

154 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

wise investments in influence, we are grading 
the way to disaster. We are preparing to 
pay out later in wrecking, personal injuries, 
maintenance and renewal of equipment, much 
more than the expense of anticipating future 
needs by keeping our men employed and con- 
tented. No amount of engine and car in- 
spection can overcome inherent defects due 
to careless workmanship. Will the track 
walker who knows not when he will be laid 
off prevent as many disasters as he whom we 
find time to tell in advance what tenure to 
expect? We can overdo this matter of run- 
ning our railroad too strictly in accordance 
with the auditor's statistical blue print. As 
surgery the operation is a great success, but 
unfortunately the patient dies. 

We have divided responsibility sufficiently 
when we furnish both the conductor and the 
engineman a copy of the train order. If it is 
desirable for the brakemen and the fireman 
to be informed, we should furnish a copy to 
each man in the crew. What is everybody's 
business becomes nobody's business. Even if 
it were practicable it is undesirable, this idea 
of showing the orders to every member of the 
crew. It would seem better to have three 

155 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

different standard signals for an engineman 
whistling into town; one indicating a wait 
order or a meeting point, either by time table 
or train order; another indicating a passing 
point, and a third indicating no other trains 
to be considered. The wrong signal sounded 
by the engineman should cause the conductor 
to stop the train with the air before the switch 
is reached. Some roads now have the engine- 
man sound a prescribed signal, after the 
station whistle, to indicate orders to be exe- 
cuted. The objection to this is that valuable 
time may be lost by the conductor before be- 
ing sure whether or not he heard the signal. 
A condition should not be indicated in a 
negative manner by the failure to do some- 
thing. All indications should be of a positive 
nature, that a positive understanding may re- 
suit and positive action be taken. It may be 
a little hard to give up the good old long 
blast for stations, but safety demands some 
such modification. 

The fad for main track derails at interlock- 
ing plants seems nearly to have ditched itself. 
We are realizing that it is not necessary to 
kill an engineman who runs past a signal. 
The money that such unnecessary derailments 

156 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

have cost might better have been spent in en- 
forcing discipline by increased official super- 
vision. If main track derails were proper for 
an interlocking plant, it would logically fol- 
low that every block signal should be inter- 
locked with a derail. Desirable as they are 
on auxiliary low-speed routes, it is doubtful 
if derails have any place in a main track, even 
at drawbridges. We are learning, too, that a 
good derail can be installed without cutting 
the rail. 

Public opinion is aroused on the subject of 
our failure to safeguard human life in pro- 
portion to our progress in other matters. We 
must cough up the money for more block sig- 
nals. I say block signals, not because they 
are the panacea for the evil that many people 
imagine, but because they are the best safe- 
guard yet devised. They are useless without 
proper discipline and supervision. The verti- 
cal plane coupler is not all that can be desired. 
Yet if modern equipment had to stand the 
slack of the link and pin it would be in a bad 
way. The block signal even with the train 
staff or the train tablet is far from perfect. 
It is impolitic, however, for us to hesitate too 
long before going down into our clothes for 

i57 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

the coin. While waiting for the perfect 
method to be developed the perfect man may 
be evolved and bump the most of us out of 
our jobs. 

There will be fewer wrecks when executive 
and general officials have better control of 
temper and judgment. Feeling in an indefi- 
nite way the responsibility for an appalling 
wreck, the high official thinks he must do 
something. He butts in with some ill-con- 
sidered instructions which breed distrust of 
the entire system of running trains, which 
discount the whole organization. This action 
may result for a time in an abnormal, un- 
healthy vigilance, which is certain to be fol- 
lowed by a demoralizing reaction. When a 
condition, like a man, gets the drop on you 
the only sane thing to do is to throw up your 
hands for the time being. Wisdom consists in 
looking for the true prime cause of the afore- 
said drop. The frontal attack on a buzz saw 
is suicidal. Always take it in flank. 

When you get your block signals, consider 
the permissive block as an abomination before 
the Lord. The only block to have is the posi- 
tive block in both directions. If there is 
trouble in a block, let the dispatcher give the 

158 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

delayed train a message to flag over. En- 
courage your men to flag over, block or no 
block, against any train on the road when 
common sense dictates such a course. The 
object of all rules is to run trains with safety, 
not to tie them up on technicalities. Flag- 
ging means good flagging, signals as sure and 
unmistakable as fixed signals. Some day we 
shall find time to instruct our flagmen uni- 
formly. They should all either put the red 
light on the end of a tie and swing the white 
light across the track, or they should swing 
both lights; not sometimes one way, some- 
times the other. A red light of itself means 
stop. If the flagman swings it he runs a big 
risk of blowing it out. In matters of this sort 
there cannot be too much uniformity for all 
roads. Where we run uniformity into the 
ground is where we fail to recognize the radi- 
cal differences in individual characteristics of 
men of the Atlantic, the Pacific and the 
prairie type. 

Realization, if not repentance, must pre- 
cede salvation. We must save ourselves. If 
not, the government doctrinaires will under- 
take a task for which we are better qualified. 
We cannot stop killing people to-day or to- 

i59 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

morrow, this year or next. The problem is 
not as easy for us as for the oft cited English 
railways. Their block signals are a coinci- 
dence, not a prime cause of their safer opera- 
tion. Much of our mileage has only a specu- 
lator's or a promoter's excuse for existence. 
Much of our traffic is so thin that English 
thoroughness would put a part of our lines 
out of business, much to our relief, but much 
to the intolerance of the public. Until our 
systems are sufficiently stable to remove the 
tempting sign, "Please kick me," from the 
view of the financial manipulator, we cannot 
keep out of the scrimmage, we cannot build 
up as safe and conservative operating organ- 
izations as the English. We can, however, 
do much better than we are doing. Auto- 
matic devices will help, but they are only a 
check. The balance lies, my boy, in develop- 
ing the human interest of the men, high and 
low, who work for the road. 

Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 



160 



LETTER XXIII. 

UNIONISM. 

August 21, 1904. 
My Dear Boy: — "What will you put in its 
place, Bob?" was perhaps the hardest query 
that the brilliant Ingersoll had to answer in 
his assaults on the Christian religion. Does 
not the same question confront us in our at- 
tacks upon organized labor? We endeavor 
to tear down, but do we build up? This sub- 
ject, like the marriage relation, cannot be 
entered into lightly. It is longer than a train 
of ore jimmies, and broader than a box vesti- 
bule. It is a bridge too close to the track for 
the telltales to sting your face in time to get 
off a furniture car. Like the ostrich, believ- 
ing itself hidden with its head stuck in the 
sand, we feel that if we call them committees 
of our employes we are not recognizing the 
union. Is this consistent? We claim, and 
justly so, that a high principle is involved; 
that if we recognize the union we practically 
161 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

force every man to join, regardless of his own 
inclinations and of his freedom as an Ameri- 
can citizen. This is sound doctrine, but its 
application is very faulty. Our spirit may be 
willing, but our flesh is damnably weak. Do 
we give the non-union man a show for his 
white alley? Not as long as we fail to ques- 
tion the credentials of committees. We know 
that all their names appear on the payrolls, 
at least during the time they are not laying 
off and using our transportation for organiz- 
ing or grievance work. We do not disturb 
ourselves to find if they were elected as em- 
ployes. Did the non-union men have any voice 
in their selection? Not much; they were 
elected in the lodge room. We, in effect, say 
to the non-union man that the way to the 
band wagon is through the lodge room door. 
Then we are very much shocked to find that 
he, like ourselves, is following the lines of 
least resistance. It is so much easier to run 
with the current of traffic than to cross over ; 
it takes so much less nerve to open up for 
trailing points than to keep our hand off the 
air valve when approaching facing points. 
When a move is made to run out a non-union 
man, we are so afraid of being accused of 
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Letters From A Railway Official. 

holding somebody up that we put on the man 
the whole burden of making good. 

Unionism, like religion, and like love, is 
the outgrowth of certain feelings and emo- 
tions in the human breast that strive to over- 
come the limitations of mankind; that seek 
to make an eternity of time, an ideal of an 
idea, a solid phalanx out of heterogeneous 
parts. You may win the strike, down the 
union, hire your men as individuals; but 
sooner or later, in the Lord's own good time, 
in obedience to natural law, they will organize 
in some form, under some name or other. 
Only a few will stand out; some from sheer 
contrariness; more from strong individuality 
of temperament. The outsiders, from a lack 
of organization, have little positive influence, 
simply a negative conservatism. 

Since these things are so, why not, to drop 
into familiar phrase, be governed accord- 
ingly? Instead of letting the men organize 
the road, why not have the road organize the 
men? The system of collective bargaining, of 
labor contracts, has come to stay. It is 
merely a question of how and with whom we 
shall deal. It is so easy to let out work by 
contract, to call on the supply dealer to help 

163 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

us out, that doubt as to our own powers of 
organization becomes habit of mind. We 
farm out our rest rooms, our temperance en- 
couraging resorts, to the Railroad Y. M. C. 
A. Where comes in the company, whose 
existence makes occupation possible, whose 
capital is invested, whose property is in- 
volved? 

Do you think we have made effort enough 
to let our men organize as employes? Should 
not all our plans for terminals and headquar- 
ters include the excellent investment of a club 
house and assembly hall? When we have 
tried this plan and failed have we not been 
too easily discouraged? Sometimes the cause 
of failure has been our own mistake in select- 
ing the wrong location, in deferring too much 
to the convenience of our own land company, 
in attempting too much official supervision, in 
allowing our local officials to butt in to ride 
their pet hobbies. Let us try turning the 
building over to a committee of our employes 
and inculcate a feeling of pride and responsi- 
bility. Our employes are a high grade of 
men; many of them are nature's noblemen. 
It is true they sometimes worship false gods, 
indulge in strikes, commit violence, and re- 
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Letters From A Railway Official. 

quire vigorous discipline. Although mis- 
guided in all this, they are usually honest as 
individuals. When banded together there re- 
sults the same tendency that exists in politi- 
cal parties, in churches and in societies, to 
mistake their own organization for the only 
defender of the true faith. This same spirit 
plans religious crusades, gains converts by the 
sword and destroys freedom in the name of 
liberty. This spirit run mad breeds anarchy, 
It may result in a condition, as with us in the 
strikes of 1894, when cold lead and sharp 
steel are needed to cool hot blood, when the 
innocent have to suffer with the guilty. This 
spirit is unreasonable, but its existence can- 
not be ignored. 

"Men," says Marcus Aurelius, "exist for 
one another; teach them then or bear with 
them. ,, It is up to us to do more of the teach- 
ing act. A prime requisite of a teacher is 
honesty. Let us be honest. Let us either 
recognize the unions outright, or else try to 
teach them that they have not yet attained 
full age; that as yet they are lacking in the 
ripe wisdom which permits of a larger partici- 
pation in affairs. Let us be fair and tell them 
wherein they are lacking. Capital, from in- 

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Letters From A Railway Official. 

herent differences in nature, can never sur- 
render itself to the absolute control of labor. 
Capital can, however, give labor, its poor 
neighbor, the results of deeper study, of wider 
view, of larger experience. It can point out 
the consequences of mistakes of past cen- 
turies, as, for example, the shortsighted poli- 
cies of the trade guilds in England. We can 
teach the unions that much more than the 
payment of dues should be essential to mem- 
bership ; that they are in a position to demand 
high standards of conduct. The unions must 
learn that if they would be powerful, they 
must be severe as well as just. If they desire 
merely benevolent and comfortable care of 
their members they must put away the ambi- 
tion for recognition. To be respected they 
must purge their ranks of the morally unfit. 
The union must expel the thief and the 
drunkard, as well as the thug and the ruffian, 
if justly discharged by the company, before 
it can hope to be trusted as a judge of ca- 
pacity. It must learn that the American 
people will never stand for the closed shop, 
the restricted output, a limited number of 
craftsmen. 

The failure of the A. R. U. strike in 1894 
166 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

taught a much-needed lesson. It put many 
a good man on the hog train, but it was a 
terrible warning to would-be strikers. Did 
we maintain our advantage? Did we develop 
more men and prepare for the great rush of 
business the years were sure to bring? Per- 
haps we did the best we could; perhaps in 
the name of economy we maintained too few 
officials. Perhaps our officials were so over- 
worked that they did not have time to watch 
the game. Perhaps the situation got away 
from us because the unions increased their 
official payrolls relatively faster than did the 
railroads. Perhaps the union leaders made 
relatively greater progress than railway offi- 
cials in attracting the men with insurance 
or profit-sharing features. The whole ques- 
tion is interlocked with so many side lines 
that it is easy to overlook a dwarf signal or 
two. Be that as it may, we lost our nerve 
and shut off too far back in the country when 
we got a meeting order for the flush times of 
1902. We were so afraid the (other fellow 
might make a dollar or two if we happened 
to tie up, that we yielded the inch which has 
resulted in the ell of union domination. A 
war, terrible as it is, may result in good. 

167 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

There are worse things than strikes to con- 
template. We chose peace at any price, and 
we are paying the price. We blame our 
statesmen and politicians for not resisting 
union influence, for being morally responsible 
for the uncompromising attitude of union 
leaders. Why should they open our firebox 
door for us as long as we fear to burn our 
own fingers? The great comfort in the situa- 
tion is that we are beginning to wake up. 
We have walked long enough in our sleep. 
The slumbering giant, business sense, is 
aroused. The worst is over if we but do our 
part. The unions have come to stay. Their 
extermination, even if desirable, is as imprac- 
ticable as liquor prohibition. We cannot sur- 
render supinely. The solution lies in wise 
regulation, in education, in the inculcation of 
true temperance of thought and action. 
Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 



168 



LETTER XXIV. 

THE ROUND-UP. 

August 28, 1904. 
My Dear Boy : — When you have a confer- 
ence of your staff, do not overlook the store- 
keeper. Even if he reports to the general 
storekeeper, he should be on your staff in 
somewhat the same relation to you as is 
the master mechanic who reports to the su- 
perintendent of motive power. If the man- 
agement, in the last treaty of peace, has 
awarded the storekeeper to some other sov- 
ereignty, be foxy enough to invite him to 
be present for his own good. He will not 
decline to come. Then, when you are dis- 
cussing work trains; when the master me- 
chanic figures out the engines; the train- 
master, the crews; the roadmaster, the men; 
the chief dispatcher, the working hours; 
the whole arrangement will not fall down 
from lack of material which the storekeeper 
did not know about in time. Invite the 
storekeeper out on the road with you; drop 
169 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

in frequently at the storehouse and see if 
you cannot help him out of his difficulties. 
We all have our troubles. Do not proclaim 
your own inefficiency and narrowness by writ- 
ing the general superintendent that your fail- 
ure has been due to the store department fall- 
ing down on material. Unless you have kept 
close to the game, you may find that you were 
lame in not giving sufficient warning ; that the 
stuff was loaded in time but was delayed by 
the transportation department waiting for full 
tonnage. 

When you get to be general manager, do 
not forget the general storekeeper. Keep 
close to him and take him out often. When 
you become operating vice-president, do the 
same with the purchasing agent, whose posi- 
tion, like that of the general storekeeper, is 
an evolution from a clerkship in some general 
office. Not all of us have realized the neces- 
sary elevation of these places to official status. 
They, too, have come to stay. They will sur- 
vive even the awkwardness of their own titles. 
Would not "purchaser" or "buyer," and "sup- 
plyman" or "supplier," be better terms? 

Speaking of inviting people to ride in your 
car. From operating vice-presidents down 

170 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

we do not avail ourselves sufficiently of the 
company of representatives of the accounting 
department. They do not and should not re- 
port to us. They, however, compile statistics 
from data which we furnish. We want to 
have our data in such good shape that they 
will not misinterpret. As they count our Aus- 
tralian ballots, it is important for us to know 
how to put the cross opposite the eagle or 
the rooster. On the other hand, the service 
will not suffer if we have a chance, on the 
ground, to show the inconsistency of some 
arbitrary requirements. 

I carried by an idea in a recent letter. I 
asked the man on the opposite run to take it 
back ; but he, too, had a big switch list and a 
time order. So it has been an over in the 
freight room until now I bill it free astray. 
The thought is that our organization should 
provide automatically, as in the army and 
the navy, for the next in rank available to as- 
sume the duties of an absent or incapacitated 
official. A superintendent has to be sick or 
absent for quite a long time before we desig- 
nate an acting superintendent. We let the 
chief clerk sign for him, an absurd fiction if 
long continued. Why should not the assist- 

171 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

ant superintendent, or, if none, the trainmas- 
ter, sign as acting superintendent as a matter 
of course when the accidents of the service 
take the superintendent off the division? An 
assistant is really a deputy, although, with all 
our borrowing and mutilating of titles, we 
have not utilized the comprehensive qualifica- 
tion of "deputy." The time is soon coming 
when we shall welcome the opportunity of 
making our organization elastic by giving 
understudies the title of acting so and so. As 
we grow in liberality we shall feel proud to 
lend one of our men to another road for a 
few months at a time to do special work or 
to introduce some new idea that he has de- 
veloped. The other road will be glad to pay 
the man a good salary, and he will return to 
us all the broader and more valuable because 
of service elsewhere. We have been mean- 
time training another man for any vacancy in 
the grade that may occur. By the same 
token, we shall by and by consider it a privi- 
lege to get back in our official family a man 
whom we trained to our ways in youth, but 
who has been broadened by service with dif- 
ferent roads. We shall get over considering 
him as having lost his rights, as an unpardon- 
172 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

able offender against our sacred civil service. 
There is never any affection stronger than 
our first real love. 

As you master the details of your profes- 
sion, as you carry out loyally the policies of 
your management, keep in mind the possi- 
bility of radical changes. We shall not forever 
keep up the absurdity of a Pullman conduc- 
tor's snap and a train conductor's busy job. 
When we each own at least the sleeping and 
parlor cars local to our own rails, the con- 
ductor will run the train and perhaps work 
the sleepers, while a collector will work the 
coaches and chair cars. When oil burners 
and automatic stokers have revolutionized 
the fireman's duties, when train orders are 
unknown, when the position or color of a 
signal is the only instruction, we may trans- 
fer the command of the train to one of the 
men in the engine. When we so protect our 
trains by block signals or other devices that 
to send back a flag is an absurdity, our train- 
men will become starters, and perhaps col- 
lectors, with duties not dissimilar to those of 
guards on elevated roads. When the much- 
needed motor car for suburban and branch 
service is perfected, other changes will come. 

i73 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

You may not live to see electricity displace 
steam for heavy motive power, but you had 
better not gamble all your life insurance on 
such a proposition. 

The tendency has been to limit all the utili- 
ties of a railroad to transportation. Before 
long we shall, for a time at least, be going 
to the opposite extreme. Some of us have 
entered the pension and life insurance busi- 
ness, some own coal mines directly or in- 
directly. Should we not manufacture our own 
ice at various points as needed and cut out 
some haul? Should we not control the banks 
in the cities and towns where we disburse so 
much money? Why not grain elevators and 
industrial plants? Can we afford to manufac- 
ture relatively fewer of our own appliances 
than that comprehensive organization, the 
Standard Oil Company? These questions 
cannot be answered easily or by a simple yes 
or no. They all depend upon time and cir- 
cumstance. Our trouble has been a funda- 
mental error in reasoning, a dogmatic gen- 
eralization from too few particular cases. 
Stagnation is usually death to business. As 
we cannot back up, it would seem wise to be 
ready to move forward in power and influ- 

i74 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

ence. Ours is a high destiny. The railway 
officials of the future will never be without 
knotty propositions to tackle. They will not 
have to work as long hours as we, but their 
problems will be more intense. The injector 
saves the drudgery of jacking up an engine 
to pump her, but it does not warrant sitting 
down while waiting for the steam derrick. 

Through all the improvements, real or 
imaginary, through all the changes that the 
years may bring, bear in mind the human ele- 
ment. Although the race grows better all 
the time, the old Adam and Eve will be ever 
present in all of us. High explosives, armor 
plate, modern weapons, modify the conditions 
of war, but as the Japs and Russians are 
teaching us to-day we can never do entirely 
without the individual initiative, without the 
courage necessary for the hand-to-hand con- 
flict. Some may deplore this condition, but, 
in the words of the Salvation Army lassie, I 
thank God for it. 

For a period covering some thirty years, 
beginning and ending over a hundred years 
ago, an English nobleman and statesman, the 
Earl of Chesterfield, man of letters, wrote a 
series to his son. The morals inculcated are 

i75 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

hardly acceptable in this better age. The 
manners taught, the art of pleasing so attract- 
ively set forth, have a value to-day, have 
made the term Chesterfield a synonym for 
grace. Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son 
were collected to the number of nearly five 
hundred and published in book form. He has 
had many imitators, and I confess to being 
one of them. Whether or not he borrowed 
the idea from some ancient father I have 
never sent a tracer to find out. Now that 
you and I are to be near enough for heart-to- 
heart talks, my weekly letters will cease. 
Whether or not they shall be preserved in 
book form it is up to you to say. 

Affectionately, your own 

D. A. D. 



176 



POSTSCRIPT. 

BY FRANK H. SPEARMAN. 

When a young army officer, a West 
Pointer, resigns his commission to become a 
railroad man the unusual happens and ob- 
servers naturally follow the result with in- 
terest. Major Charles Hine was more than 
a lieutenant of the Sixth United States In- 
fantry when he threw up his commission to 
become a freight brakeman on the Big Four. 
He was even then, at twenty-eight, a graduate 
of the Cincinnati Law School, a member of 
the bar and a practical civil engineer. When 
the country needed her army men in 1898, 
Lieutenant Hine, then on the staff of a Big 
Four superintendent in Cleveland, secured 
leave of absence, volunteered and was com- 
missioned a major of the First District of 
Columbia Infantry. After Santiago, Ma- 
jor Hine promptly resumed his work as a 
railroadman. He has served as brakeman, 
switchman, yardmaster, conductor, chief clerk 
to the superintendent, trainmaster, assistant 

177 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

superintendent and general superintendent. 
He is, by nature, a student; no task is too 
onerous to dismay him if there is in it or be- 
hind it something he can learn. Thus he has 
not only stored away information, but he has 
learned how to impart it, and his fund of 
shrewd observation and good common sense 
he has drawn on in writing a railroad book 
entitled "Letters From an Old Railway Of- 
ficial to His Son, a Division Superintendent" 

The letters cover a breadth of ground in 
railway operation that is really astonishing 
to any one who does not know the man be- 
hind them. This is not all; loaded as they 
are with nuggets of hard, practical sense in 
railroad practice, they have a form and finish 
that make them doubly attractive. They are 
short, compact, of an easy and agreeable style 
and both lively and humorous as well as in- 
structive. 

Major Hine has long since won his literary 
spurs as a contributor to the Army and Navy 
Journal, The Railway Age and The Century 
Magazine. His present book is bright, quick 
and gossipy, and it would interest a man that 
did not know the difference between a puzzle 
switch and a gravity yard, but its especial 
178 



Letters From A Railway Official. 

appeal is to the young railroad man of to- 
day who understands that whether in the 
operating department, the accounting depart- 
ment or the motive power, he must, to get 
ahead, know all that he can, and the letters 
cover as many railroad subjects as they bear 
numbers. They will take their place at once 
in railroad libraries and in railroad literature. 
Major Hine — recently doing special railroad 
work on the staff of the general manager of 
the Rock Island system and at present on the 
staff of the second vice-president of the Bur- 
lington, specially charged with the subject of 
company supplies — may write longer and 
more pretentious books than this ; but hardly 
one of more real value to the ambitious young 
railroad man. 



179 



NOV 25 1904 



